Baikonur Cosmodrome, Sep 15 (UNI) The Soyuz-2.1a rocket put the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft into the low-Earth orbit, carrying two Russians and a US citizen to the International Space Station (ISS), a Sputnik correspondent reported on Friday.
The spacecraft was launched from Baikonur spaceport at 18:44 Moscow time (15:44 GMT). The ship will now begin an independent flight to the ISS, and the estimated travel time is just over three hours. The spacecraft is scheduled to dock with the ISS at 21:56 Moscow time.
The crew of the spacecraft includes Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub and NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara. Kononenko and Chub will spend a year and O'Hara will spend six months on the ISS. This is Kononeko's fifth space flight, by the end of which he will become the first person who will spend more than a thousand days in space in total.
UNI/SPUTNIK AKS