NASA astronaut Don Pettit, alongside Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday, raising the station’s crew count to 12 for a 13-day handover period. The Roscosmos Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft docked automatically with the ISS’s Rassvet module at 3:32 p.m. EDT, after launching earlier in the day from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
NASA will stream the hatch opening at 5:30 p.m. EDT, with the opening scheduled to begin at 5:50 p.m. Once aboard, the new arrivals will join Expedition 71 crew members, including NASA astronauts and fellow Roscosmos cosmonauts, as the station prepares for the transition to Expedition 72 on Sept. 23.
Pettit, Ovchinin, and Vagner will spend approximately six months aboard the ISS conducting scientific research, before returning to Earth in spring 2025. Their arrival precedes the anticipated launches of SpaceX Crew-9 in September and Crew-10 in February 2025, further expanding the ISS’s research capabilities.–News Desk