Soyuz Hatches Open, Expedition 71 Welcomes Trio Aboard Station

The Soyuz MS-26 crew joins the Expedition 71 crew in orbit aboard the International Space Station. Credit: NASA
The Soyuz MS-26 trio joins the Expedition 71 crew in orbit aboard the International Space Station. Credit: NASA

The hatch between the International Space Station and the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft opened at 5:58 p.m. EDT.

The spacecraft arrived at the orbiting laboratory’s Rassvet module at 3:32 p.m. Sept. 11, after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 12:23 p.m. (9:23 p.m. Baikonur time) with NASA astronaut Don Petitt and Roscosmos cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner.

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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