The Soyuz-2.1a rocket with the Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft, carrying TASS cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his business assistant Yozo Hirano, launched from site No. 31 of the Baikonur cosmodrome.
The ship has been put into orbit. The meeting with the ISS will take place according to a four-turn scheme and will take approximately 6 hours and 3 minutes. The docking of the Soyuz MS-20 to the small research module “Poisk” is scheduled at 4.41 pm Moscow time. The duration of the flight of the ship’s crew will be 12 days, so they will return to Earth on the morning of December 20, 2021.
Onboard the Soyuz MS-20 are also congratulatory correspondence from relatives and friends, personal gifts, favourite musical compositions, and homemade treats for the festive table. In total, it is planned to deliver about 162 kg of payloads to the ISS, including materials for biomedical research and experiments, consumables, hygiene products, food rations, as well as 13 kg of fresh fruit.
It is reminded that the ‘TASS’ Russian news agency and the ‘Roscosmos’ state space corporation signed a memorandum of cooperation on November 17, 2021, which implies the creation of an agency’s office on the ISS. As specified, the first TASS correspondent onboard the orbital position will be the Hero of Russia, cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, whose task will be to report on the space station’s daily routine.
