Crew members from the International Space Station will take a short detour in a Soyuz spacecraft today (March 19) and relocate to make way for the arrival of another Soyuz next month. And you can watch the whole thing live!
NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and two Russian cosmonauts, Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, will launch the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft today at 12:38 EDT (1638 GMT). according to a statement from NASA. Live coverage will begin at 12:15 PM EDT (1615 GMT), and you can watch it live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV, or directly via the space agency.
The trio will climb inside the Soyuz, disconnect it from the station’s Rassvet module grounding port, which is used primarily for cargo storage and cargo cargo, and then fly to the spatial Poisk port, where the crew will recharge the vehicle. at 13:07 EDT (1707 GMT). The whole spacecraft takes about 30 minutes.
Related: The International Space Station
This Soyuz maneuver is the first relocation flight since August 2019, and the 15th Soyuz reunion in general. The newly liberated Rassvet harbor will house another Soyuz that will start on April 9 in the direction of an orbit.
On the incoming spacecraft, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who can stay on the space station for up to a year, and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov.
Rubins, Ryzhikov and Kud-Sverchkov return to Earth shortly after the newcomers arrive, leaving the orbital laboratory on April 17. They travel in their reliable Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft, which was originally launched them to the space station in October 2020.
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