Photo: NASA
The Russian Federation’s Roscosmos launched a Soyuz capsule on the MS-25 mission to the International Space Station Saturday morning. Three crew members including NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson successfully launched at 8:36 a.m. EDT Saturday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station.
The launch came after a two-day delay caused by an umbilical mast remaining connected to the rocket. Roscosmos engineers repaired the faulty equipment, and today’s launch went as expected.
At the time of launch, the ISS was over the South Pacific. Because of Thursday’s launch scrub, Soyuz will take about two days to reach the ISS instead of the planned two-orbit track that would have placed the crew at their destination the same day. They will now dock at the space station’s Prichal module at about 11:09 AM EDT. on Monday, March 25.
Dyson will begin a six-month stint aboard ISS as part of Expedition 70/71, while Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya will be aboard the station for 12 days before returning to Earth in the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft already docked at the orbiting outpost.
Dyson is scheduled to return to Earth in September along with Russian astronauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub. Both will be completing a year-long mission onboard the ISS.
This will be the third spaceflight for Dyson, the fourth for Novitskiy, and the first for Vasilevskaya.
