Russia Launches Soyuz MS-24 Carrying Crew Of 3 To The Space Station

MS-24 lifted off at 1544 UTC(Sept. 15) atop a Soyuz 2.1a rocket from Site 31/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and arrived at the space station just 3 hours 9 minutes later. The launch was timed to put the Soyuz on an expedited path to the orbital station.

With MS-24's arrival at the ISS, a Soyuz carrying cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin and NASA's Frank Rubio is scheduled to come back to Earth on Sept. 27. Rubio will have spent 371 continuous days in space by that time, a record for an American astronaut.

During their time on the space station, Kononenko, Chub and O'Hara will see the arrival and departure of several visiting vehicles, perform maintenance and spacewalks (extravehicular activities or EVAs) to keep the orbital complex running and help conduct hundreds of science experiments.

"We are expecting to hit the ground running," O'Hara said during a prelaunch press conference. "We'll be very busy. We have two EVAs in mid-October that we are all very much excited for, and then after that we have a SpaceX cargo Dragon [arriving], and that always keeps us very busy with a lot of science."

O'Hara will spend half the time as Kononenko and Chub in space, to allow for a short visit by Marina Vasileyeva, a former flight attendant selected to represent the Republic of Belarus, flying on Soyuz MS-25 under an agreement with Roscosmos. After about a week at the station, Vasileyeva with return to Earth with O'Hara and Soyuz MS-25 commander Oleg Novitsky. NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson will launch with Novitsky and Vasileyeva and return to Earth with Kononenko and Chub on Soyuz MS-25.

Apparently, the hysteria surrounding the Russia-Ukraine war and western sanctions on Kremlin, have not reached the space station. Not that cosmonauts and astronauts are about to throw hands; mother gravity and oxygen made sure of that.

WATCH Soyz MS-24 launch and arrival at the space station.