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<\/p>\nThe Russian federal space agency, Roscosmos, has launched three people to the International Space Station (ISS) from Site 31\/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Liftoff occurred at 13:54:49 UTC on Wednesday, Sept. 21.<\/p>\n
The launch marks a resumption of US astronaut flights onboard Russian rockets and is the first of up to three crew swap exchanges between NASA and Roscosmos.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Crew Swap Background<\/p>\n
As originally envisioned, Soyuz MS-22 was planned to launch on Sept. 13, 2022, with a crew of three Russian cosmonauts including Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin, and Anna Kikina.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Anna Kikina, alongside her SpaceX Crew-5 crewmates. (Credit: SpaceX)<\/p>\n
This would have continued a year and a half long string of missions in which no US astronaut launched on Russian crew flights.<\/p>\n
This is not the ideal rotation process, as having an American on each Soyuz mission and a Russian on each US mission ensures that an American and a Russian are always on the ISS even if one of the crew vehicles had to return early for a medical emergency with a crewmember or a systems issue.<\/p>\n
It was the intention at the outset of the Commercial Crew Program to have this kind of crew swap now beginning with this mission; however, Russia initially declined to fly crew on Dragon (offering no proof to their claims of safety issues) before the Russian government invaded Ukraine, which complicated international relations further.<\/p>\n
SpaceX (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n In July, the two agencies announced they were close to finalizing the crew swap agreement, which eventually formalized plans for Anna Kikina to move from Soyuz MS-22 over to the SpaceX Crew-5 mission while NASA\u2019s Frank Rubio would fly on Soyuz MS-22.<\/p>\n With this agreement, cosmonaut Kikina will become the first Russian to fly on US spacecraft since Sergei Treshchov landed on the shuttle Endeavour<\/em> at the end of the STS-113 mission in December 2002.<\/p>\n Up to two more Russian and American crew swaps between Soyuz and SpaceX\u2019s Crew Dragon are possible under the current agreement in 2023 and 2024.<\/p>\n Launch Preparations<\/p>\n The crewed Soyuz spacecraft flying the mission is part of the MS series and carries a serial number of 751. It received the name Tsiolkovsky<\/em> after the Russian scientist and inventor Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Soyuz capsules are rarely named, with only four past examples going back to 2011 offered by Roscosmos, yet this seems to be a trend of late.<\/p>\n The Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft. (Credit: Energia)<\/p>\n Soyuz left its production facility at S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia on Dec. 7, 2021, for shipment to the Baikonur Cosmodrome and arrived seven days later.<\/p>\n All work at Baikonur on the Soyuz 2.1a rocket stopped from June 14 to July 17 due to a lack of Soyuz operations given sanctions against Russia.<\/p>\n In mid-July, the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft was taken out of storage for final pre-launch preparations, which included full power-up and systems tests as well as deploying and monitoring the solar energy production capability of the solar arrays.<\/p>\n Final crew certification exams began on Aug. 1, with \u201cexcellent\u201d performance noted by Roscosmos.<\/p>\n A flight readiness review was held on Sept. 1, clearing the crew as well as the rocket and spacecraft for the final elements of preflight preparations.<\/p>\n Both the prime and backup crews arrived at the launch site on Sept. 5 and performed their final fit checks inside the Soyuz MS-22 capsule on Sept. 7.<\/p>\n Soyuz MS-22 is encapsulated within the Soyuz-2.1a fairing. (Credit: Energia)<\/p>\n The Soyuz spacecraft was fueled on Sept. 8 and then loaded with provisions and science experiments before being placed inside its payload fairing, which contains the launch abort system. The fairing serial number of this flight is M15000-098.<\/p>\n Some of the experiments loaded onboard the Soyuz included Econ-M, Biofilm, Interaction-2, Biomag-M, MSC-2, FAGEN, Cardiovector, Cytomechanarium, and Reflex.<\/p>\n The Soyuz spacecraft was transported by train on Sept. 15 to its final integration building where the waiting lower stages of the Soyuz 2.1a rocket were located.<\/p>\n Here, Soyuz MS-22 was attached to the Blok-I upper stage of the Soyuz rocket before the integrated Blok-I\/Soyuz MS-22 was placed atop the Blok-A core stage of the launcher.<\/p>\n With the integration complete, final checks of the overall rocket were made before the entire assembly was taken to Site 31\/6 on Sept. 18.<\/p>\n Soyuz is rolled out to Site 31\/6 at Baikonur. (Credit: Roscosmos)<\/p>\n The Soyuz rocket has a serial number of C15000-051, and the call sign for the mission is \u201cAltai,\u201d meaning \u201cGold Mountain\u201d after the mountain range in central and east Asia where Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan meet.<\/p>\n At liftoff, the Soyuz rocket used its four boosters, core stage, and upper stage to insert the Soyuz MS-22 vehicle into an approximately 200 km circular orbit for a two-orbit, three-hour fast track rendezvous with the ISS. Docking occurred at 17:06 UTC.<\/p>\n If all goes to plan, the mission will last 188 days, returning to Earth on March 28, 2023.<\/p>\n The Crew<\/p>\n Sergei Valeriyevich Prokopyev (Roscosmos)<\/p>\n Born on Feb. 19, 1975, in Sverdlovsk, Russia, Prokopyev entered the Tambov Higher Military Pilot School where he specialized in Command Tactical Aviation and Air Movement Control and qualified as a pilot engineer.<\/p>\n In 2007, he took a two-year position flying Tu-22M3s as Commander of the air detachment of the 52nd Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment.<\/p>\n Sergei Prokopyev on board the ISS in November 2018. (Credit: NASA)<\/p>\n Beginning in 2010, he served as Commander of an aviation group of strategic bombers flying Tu-160s with the 121st Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment. Later that same year, he was recommended as a cosmonaut candidate and was officially selected on Oct. 12, 2010.<\/p>\n Prokopyev passed the state examination on Aug. 3, 2012, and was officially selected as a test cosmonaut for Roscosmos, whereupon the Russian Ministry of Defence formerly dismissed him from the armed services.<\/p>\n After serving as backup Soyuz Commander for two missions, Prokopyev was assigned his first mission on Soyuz MS-09. Arriving at the International Space Station, Prokopyev served as Flight Engineer 5 for Expedition 56 before becoming Flight Engineer 2 for Expedition 57.<\/p>\n During his first space flight, Prokopyev amassed 196 days, 17 hours, and 50 minutes in space, a flight that was notable for the discovery of a hole in the Orbital Module of the Soyuz during the docked portion of the mission.<\/p>\n Soyuz MS-22 is his second spaceflight.<\/p>\n Dmitry Alexandrovich Petelin (Roscosmos)<\/p>\n Making his first trip to space is Dmitry Petelin. <\/p>\n Born on July 10, 1983, in Kazakh USSR, now Kazakhstan, Petelin graduated from the South Ural State University in 2006 with degrees in aircraft and helicopter engineering.<\/p>\n The crew of Soyuz MS-22, from left to right: Dmitry Petelin, Sergei Prokopyev, and Frank Rubio. (Credit: Roscosmos)<\/p>\n He worked for several years as an engineer before his selection as a cosmonaut training candidate on Oct. 12, 2012.<\/p>\n After two years, he was accepted as a test cosmonaut after completing training on L-39 aircraft, parachute operations, weightlessness training onboard a laboratory aircraft, diving instruction, and wilderness survival training.<\/p>\n He served as part of the backup crew for Expedition 65 from October 2020 to February 2021 before he was assigned as a backup cosmonaut to the Soyuz MS-19 mission from May to September 2021.<\/p>\n He was again selected for backup crew support from September 2021 to January 2022 before being elevated to the main crew of Soyuz MS-22 in March 2022.<\/p>\n Francisco \u201cFrank\u201d Rubio (NASA)<\/p>\n Also making his first trip to space on this mission is NASA astronaut Frank Rubio.<\/p>\n Frank Rubio during spacewalk training at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. (Credit: NASA)<\/p>\n Rubio is a Major in the US Army as well as a helicopter pilot and flight surgeon.<\/p>\n He was born Dec. 11, 1975, in Los Angeles, California, and holds a bachelor\u2019s degree in international relations from the US Military Academy and a Doctorate of Medicine from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. His specialty is in family medicine.<\/p>\n As part of his US Army duties, Rubio was a UH-60 Blackhawk pilot, platoon leader, and company commander. He has over 1,100 hours of flying time including 600 combat hours during military operations.<\/p>\n Rubio was selected as a member of the 22nd NASA astronaut group in 2017 and officially passed training two years later.<\/p>\n (Lead photo: Soyuz-2.1a launches from Site 31\/6 with Soyuz MS-22. Credit: NASA)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Russian federal space agency, Roscosmos, has launched three people to the International Space Station (ISS) from Site 31\/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Liftoff occurred at 13:54:49 UTC on Wednesday, Sept. 21. The launch marks a resumption of US astronaut flights onboard Russian rockets and is the first of up to three crew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7831,717,233,190,234,352,1302,514],"class_list":["post-24489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-baikonur","tag-international-space-station","tag-iss","tag-nasa","tag-roscosmos","tag-russia","tag-soyuz","tag-soyuz-2-1a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24489"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24489\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/photo_12-07-18.jpg\")
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