9 Apr 2021 15:52

Soyuz MS-18 docks with International Space Station

MOSCOW. April 9 (Interfax) - The Soyuz MS-18 spaceship carrying the next Russian-U.S. crew to the International Space Station (ISS) has reached the station using a shortcut and accomplished the docking, Roscosmos said, as it was streaming the docking process.

Soyuz MS-18 docked with the Rassvet module at 2:04 p.m. Moscow time, after taking off from Baikonur at 10:42 a.m. Moscow time. The travel time to the ISS was three hours and 22 minutes.

The Soyuz-2.1a launch vehicle blasted off from Site 31 of the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 10:42 a.m. Moscow time. Soyuz MS-18 had Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov, as well as NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei on board.

The expedition is due to last for 191 days. Expedition commander Novitsky will return to Earth in October, and the other two crewmembers, Vande Hei and Dubrov, will have a longer mission. The crew will perform two spacewalks to prepare for the arrival of the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module at the station in July. The flight program also includes about 50 scientific experiments.

The current ISS crew includes Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Ryzhikov and Sergei Kud-Sverchkov, and NASA astronaut Kathleen Rubins, as well as NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi, who arrived at the station on November 17, 2020, on SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft.