The Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft lifts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 12:23 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Sept. 11. Credit: NASA
The Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft lifts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 12:23 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Sept. 11. Credit: NASA

The crewed Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft is safely in orbit headed for the International Space Station following a launch at 12:23 p.m. EDT Sept. 11 (9:23 p.m. Baikonur time) with NASA astronaut Don Petitt and Roscosmos cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner.

After a two-orbit, three-hour trajectory to the station, the spacecraft will automatically dock at the orbiting laboratory’s Rassvet module at 3:33 p.m. NASA’s coverage of rendezvous and docking will begin at 2:30 p.m. on NASA+, the NASA app, YouTube, and the agency’s website. Learn how to stream NASA content through a variety of platforms including social media. The trio will spend approximately six months aboard the orbital laboratory before returning to Earth in the spring of 2025.


Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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