A NASA astronaut and two cosmonauts are scheduled to launch to the space station on Friday.

September 14, 2023 Benjamin Hughes

International Space Station

A team of engineers prepared a Russian Soyuz spacecraft for liftoff on Friday, with the mission of transporting a seasoned cosmonaut commander, a first-time co-pilot, and a NASA astronaut to the International Space Station.International Space Station.

NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara, who is embarking on her debut space mission, will be joined by experienced commander Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub for a launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 11:44 a.m. EDT (8:44 p.m. local time) on Friday.

On Friday at 11:44 a.m. EDT (8:44 p.m. local time), the Soyuz 2.1a rocket and Soyuz MS-24/70S crew spacecraft will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. They are currently positioned on the launch pad, ready for liftoff. NASA/Bill Ingalls

EDT

The launch was scheduled to coincide with a quick three-hour and 11-minute journey to reach the space station. If everything goes smoothly, the Soyuz MS-24/70S spacecraft will dock at the Earth-facing port of the Russian Rassvet module at 2:56 p.m. EDT.

The longest solo space mission achieved by an American astronaut to date.

delayed till January

The group had initially planned to return home in March, but their flight was postponed until January.

Extended for an additional six months. COM

Following the malfunction of their Soyuz MS-22/68S spacecraft due to COM.
There was a leak in the coolant system in December.

They will return to Earth on a new Soyuz spacecraft that was launched in February as a replacement.

The team for Soyuz MS-24/70S training (from left to right): Loral O’Hara, NASA astronaut, commander Oleg Kononenko, and co-pilot Nikolai Chub. Roscosmos

Kononenko and Chub have decided to stay on the station for a whole year, and O’Hara will be there for six months.

The Russians have scheduled a “taxi” flight for next March, in which veteran commander Oleg Novitskiy, NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson, and Belarusian researcher Marina Vasilevskaya will bring a new ferry ship to the station to transport everyone up and down as needed.

Novitskiy, Vasilevskaya, and O’Hara will all come back to Earth approximately 10 days after O’Hara’s launch on Friday. Kononenko, Chub, and Dyson will continue to stay in orbit until September, when they will return to Earth on the Soyuz MS-25/71S, which will be brought by Novitskiy.

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William Harwood

Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He covered 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2’s flyby of Neptune and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of “Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia.”

Source: cbsnews.com