NASA has reported it plans to broadcast live coverage of launch of the next three crew members bound for the International Space Station, which is set for Wednesday, July 6, the administration said. The Russian rocket will carry USA astronaut Kate Rubins, Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin and Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi.
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Those upgrades include “a new digital video transmitter and encoder to send engineering video of the ship’s approach to the station for docking, a new relay telemetry capability along with an upgraded Kurs automated rendezvous antenna and an improved satellite navigation system to better calculate the Soyuz’s position in space”.
Developed by RSC Energia, a Russian manufacturer of spacecraft and space station components, the new Soyuz MS, once attached to the ISS, will also serve as a crew rescue vehicle and is kept permanently ready for emergency crew return to Earth.
Dr. Rubins will assume the role of Flight Engineer for Expeditions 48 and 49 during her four month stay on the ISS. During their time in space, Rubins, Ivanishin and Onishi will help conduct more than 250 experiments in the fields of molecular and cellular biology, human physiology, fluid dynamics, materials science and physics. But because this is the first flight for the upgraded Soyuz MS, the trip is scheduled to take two days. She’s likely to become the first scientist to sequence DNA in space, using a MinION device that’s due to be delivered later this month. More than two years of intensive training followed, leading Rubins, Ivanishin and Onishi through flight simulators, special pools to simulate zero gravity, and wintertime survival drills in Russian forests.
An alumna of Space Camp is preparing for a journey to the International Space Station. Then at 12:12AM ET Saturday, July 9th, the Soyuz will dock with the ISS, and its hatch will open at 2:50AM ET. The new crewmembers will then be greeted by the station’s present inhabitants: the station’s commander, NASA astronaut Jeff Williams, and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin.
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The Soyuz MS-01 crew of Anatoly Ivanishin of Roscosmos, Takuya Onishi of JAXA and Kate Rubins with NASA wave before boarding their spacecraft at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
