Watch Live as Russia Launches the Next ISS Crew—Including a U.S. Astronaut—to Space

The International Space Station is gearing as much as host a brand new crew. NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, together with Roscosmos astronauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, are launching on board a Soyuz MS-22 crew ship on Wednesday to spend six months on the orbiting area station. You can catch the motion dwell proper right here.

The Soyuz rocket is scheduled to blast off at 9:54 a.m. ET on Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome launch pad in Kazakhstan. The occasion will likely be streamed dwell by NASA. Coverage will start at 9 a.m. ET on NASA TV, the NASA app, and the company’s website. You may tune in via the feed under.

The crew’s launch will mark Prokopyev’s second flight into area and the primary flight for Rubio and Petelin. Following a three-and-a-half hour journey, the three-member Expedition 68 crew will dock to the Rassvet module on the Russian facet of the area station at 1:11 p.m. ET. About every week after their arrival, crew members of Expedition 67 will start their journey again to Earth. After launching to the ISS on March 18, station commander Oleg Artemyev, flight engineers Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov will board the Soyuz crew ship to reenter Earth’s ambiance and contact down in Kazakhstan.

European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti will take over as station commander following Artemyev’s departure, turning into the first European girl chosen to command the ISS.

Expedition 68’s Rubio would be the first NASA astronaut to fly aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket since April 2021. The area company has relied on its business accomplice SpaceX to launch its astronauts to the ISS, however a latest seat-swap settlement stipulated {that a} U.S. astronaut will journey aboard a Soyuz capsule whereas a Russian cosmonaut will get to strap right into a Crew Dragon for the very first time. Rubio was ultimately chosen because the U.S. astronaut, whereas cosmonaut Anna Kikina was chosen to participate within the upcoming SpaceX Crew-5 mission, presently scheduled to launch on October 3.

The seat-swap agreement came on July 15, the same day that Dmitry Rogozin was dismissed from his position as director general of Roscosmos. It’s not clear whether the end of Rogozin’s controversial reign would bring about more peaceful relations between NASA and Roscosmos, but things have been a lot quieter between the two space agencies lately. That said, it does seem inappropriate, and even a bit unsettling, to see this level of cooperation while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues.

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