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A Soyuz rocket was launched on its launch pad in Kazakhstan on Friday, ready to take off to the International Space Station on Tuesday with Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, actress Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shipenko.
The Soyuz-2.1a launcher, positioned sideways on a special wagon, emerged from a Baikonur Cosmodrome integration building and made its way to the launch pad at Site 31 just after sunrise on Friday.
After arriving at the launch complex, the rocket was lifted vertically above the platform’s flame trench. Ground crews set up retractable duty towers around the rocket, giving access to the vehicle for final preflight checks and to the three-person crew ready to put the Soyuz into orbit on Tuesday.
Russian teams will load kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants into the three-stage rocket in the final hours before launch.
Take-off with the Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft is scheduled for Tuesday at 4:55:02 a.m. EDT (0855:02 GMT; 13:55:02 Baikonur time), kicking off a three-hour chase of the International Space Station.
Powered by nearly a million pounds of thrust, the Soyuz thruster will head northeast of Baikonur, shedding its four strap-on liquid-fueled thrusters about two missions in the mission. The rocket will drop the aerodynamic fairing protecting the Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft, and the center stage will give way to a third stage to complete the work of orbiting the spacecraft.
The spacecraft will separate from the third floor and begin maneuvering to match the orbit of the space station, culminating in an automated docking at the outpost’s Rassvet module at 8:12 a.m. EDT (12:12 GMT).
Shkaplerov, a veteran of three previous space station expeditions, logged 533 days in orbit. He begins a mission of nearly six months which should last until the end of March.
Shipenko and Peresild will spend 11 days in the space station shooting a Russian feature film called “The Challenge”. During this time, 10 people will live and work on board the complex.
The two-person film crew will leave the station and return to Earth on October 16 aboard the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft with cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, which launched into orbit on April 9. The Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft will parachute for a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan.
The teammates who launched with Novitskiy in April – NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Russian flight engineer Pyotr Dubrovnik – saw their missions extended to accommodate the Russian film crew. Vande Hei and Dubrovnik will spend nearly a year in the space station before returning to Earth with Shkaplerov aboard the Soyuz MS-19 probe next March.
The Soyuz crew rotation will be followed later this month by the launch of a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on October 30 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Crew Dragon will transport NASA Commander Raja Chari, Pilot Thomas Marshburn, European Space Agency Astronaut Matthias Maurer and NASA Mission Specialist Kayla Barron to the Space Station.
Chari and his teammates will replace an outgoing Dragon Crew that launched in April. Commander Shane Kimbrough, Pilot Megan McArthur, Japanese Astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and ESA Astronaut Thomas Pesquet will return to Earth aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavor spacecraft during the first week of November, aiming for a ditching off the coast of Florida.
Additional photos of the Soyuz rocket deployment are posted below.
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