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A Agency astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts will launch toward the International Space Station (ISS) today (September 11), and you can watch the action live.
Agency astronaut Don Pettit will join Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which is set to lift off aboard a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan today at 12:23 p.m. EDT (1623 GMT; 9:23 p.m. Baikonur local time). The trio will join the Expedition 71 crew for a half-year mission aboard the ISS.
Today’s Soyuz MS-26 launch will be streamed live here on Space.com, via Agency+ (formerly Agency Television). Coverage begins at 11:15 a.m. EDT (1515 GMT). Agency will also broadcast the planned docking of the Soyuz with the ISS at 3:33 p.m. EDT (1933 GMT), beginning at 2:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT), and the opening of the hatch between the two spacecraft at 5:50 p.m. EDT (2150 GMT), beginning at 5:30 p.m. EDT (2230 GMT).
Each of the crew members had flown in space before. This will be Pettit's fourth launch and will add to his cumulative total of 370 days in space, according to Agency statistics. His first mission, Expedition 6, was expected to last 2.5 months in space after a Nov. 23, 2002, launch on space shuttle Endeavour's STS-113 mission.
However, the landing was delayed until May 3, 2003, after the shuttle fleet was grounded in the wake of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster that occurred on February 1, 2003, which killed seven astronauts. Pettit's arrival on Earth aboard the Soyuz TMA-1 spacecraft was safe but eventful: a malfunction caused the spacecraft to land 295 miles (475 kilometers) short of its target, resulting in a long delay for ground crews to reach the crew.
Related: Three astronauts arrive at the ISS aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft
Pettit also flew in space on shuttle mission STS-126 in November 2008, and (aboard Soyuz TMA-03M) on ISS Expeditions 30 and 31 from December 21, 2011, to July 1, 2012.
All of Ovchinin's launches have been aboard the Soyuz. His previous missions include Expeditions 47 and 48 to the ISS in 2016, the launch of the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft on October 11, 2018 that was safely aborted after a problem with the rocket, and Expeditions 59 and 60 in 2019, a successful new attempt for Ovchinin after that abort.
Vagner's previous launch was aboard Soyuz for Expeditions 62 and 63 in 2020.