Russian space agency Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei will launch from the Baikonur cosmonaut in Kazakhstan to the space station on Friday.
The crew will arrive at the station at 07:07 ET, and the hatches between the Soyuz spacecraft and the station will open at around 09:00 ET.
This fast-moving journey to the space station, which includes two orbits of the Earth and approximately three hours of travel time, is thanks to the new Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft.
Their arrival will bring the total number of crew members at the station to 10 residents.
Astronauts at the space station prepared for the new crew by setting up extra berths and clearing ports.
Russian astronauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, along with NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, recently moved the Soyuz MS-17 capsule out of its harbor to make way for the latest crew launched from Baikonur.
Ryzhikov, Kud-Sverchkov and Rubins arrived at the space station in the Soyuz capsule after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in October.
The crew members moved their spacecraft from the Rassvet module, which has a ground-connecting port, and moved them to the Poisk plant gate, which faces the space, in March. This freed up the Rassvet module port for the new crew and their Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft.
Rubins, Ryzhikov and Kud-Sverchkov will return to Earth in the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft on April 17.
Members of the historic NASA SpaceX Crew-1, including NASA astronauts Victor Glover Jr., Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker, and Japan’s space exploration agency Soichi Noguchi, who launched from the US to the space station in November , will also follow the launch of Crew-2 next month.
This second rotation using the NASA SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft will include NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, the astronaut of the Japanese Space Agency Akihiko Hoshide and the astronaut of the European astronaut Thomas Pesquet.
Crew-2, which could launch on April 22, will join Crew-1 on the space station before Crew-1 returns to Earth.
This is the second spaceflight for Vande Hei, the third spaceflight Novitskiy and the first for Dubrov.
Vande Hei was selected as an astronaut in 2009 and had his first astronaut experience at the space station from September 2017 to February 2018. During his 168 days on board the station, Vande Hei led four space walks. This time, Vande Hei and the crew will work on several experiments, including studies on Alzheimer’s disease and portable ultrasound devices.
Vande Hei’s flight with the Soyuz spacecraft is part of a contract with Houston’s Axiom Space. In return, NASA will primarily save a seat on a future commercial spacecraft launch in 2023 for a non-NASA space station crew member.
While NASA is working with Boeing and SpaceX to ensure safe transport of crew to and from the space station using pilots based in the US, this means that there will always be one US crew member on the space station for one seat on the Soyuz to seize.
Their launch takes place just three days before the 60th anniversary of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin as the first human in space, as well as the 40th anniversary of the first launch of NASA’s spacecraft.