2024-09-10 20:02:15
NASA astronaut Don Pettit, along with Russian cosmonauts Alexei Ovchinin and Ivan Wagner, are scheduled to blast off tomorrow, September 11, aboard the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft for a six-month mission to the International Space Station (ISS), the site reported of the American space agency NASA.
The launch of the ship is planned for 19:23 Bulgarian time from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
After a fast trajectory of two orbits and three hours, Soyuz MS-26 is expected to dock with the ISS by docking with the station’s Dawn module.
Upon arrival, the three newcomers will join NASA astronauts Tracy K. Dyson, Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominique, Janet Epps, Butch Wilmore, and Sunita Williams, as well as Roscosmos cosmonauts Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebyonkin, and Oleg Kononenko.
The crew is scheduled to spend 202 days in orbit and return on April 1, 2025. For the six-month mission, 42 science experiments are planned, of which 3 are being conducted for the first time. In addition, in December, cosmonauts Ovchinin and Wagner, who is also a TASS correspondent, will perform a spacewalk – they will install a spectrometer for the All Sky Monitor experiment on the outer surface of the Zvezda module.
The team will continue the research that has been going on aboard the ISS for more than two decades. The International Space Station, a cornerstone of human presence in space, has been inhabited continuously since 2000, writes BTA.
The launch, flight and docking of Soyuz MS-26 will be broadcast live on NASAT’s streaming platforms, including NASA+, the NASA app, YouTube and the agency’s website, with coverage starting at 6:15 p.m. Bulgarian time.