Crewed Soyuz mission to space station launching next week; NASA to provide live coverage

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio is all set to take a ride to the International Space Station with Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin aboard the Soyuz MS-22 crew ship, which is scheduled to lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 9:54 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Sept. 21 (6:54 p.m. Baikonur time).

After a two-orbit, three-hour journey, the Soyuz spacecraft will dock to the space station's Rassvet module and two hours post-docking, hatches between the Soyuz and the station will open. 

Astronaut Frank Rubio is set to launch on his first mission to the @Space_Station aboard a Soyuz rocket on Wed, Sept. 21 with crew members Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin. Live coverage begins at 9am ET (13:00 UTC), liftoff at 9:54am ET (13:54 UTC): https://t.co/PHGCtPqoFF pic.twitter.com/uh6lxdW8JN

— NASA (@NASA) September 17, 2022

The trio will spend six months aboard the orbital laboratory, joining Expedition 67 Commander Oleg Artemyev, cosmonauts Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov of Roscosmos, as well as NASA astronauts Bob Hines, Kjell Lindgren, and Jessica Watkins, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.

NASA will provide live coverage of key events on NASA Television's Public Channel, the NASA app, and on the agency's website, beginning at 9 a.m.

Meanwhile, NASA and SpaceX are gearing up for the fifth crewed operational mission (Crew-5) to the space station. The crew, including Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada of NASA, Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, will lift off aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft named Endurance - atop the company's Falcon 9 rocket - from NASA Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A in Florida on October 3. The four crewmates will dock Dragon Endurance to the forward port on the station's Harmony module about 24 hours later.