State commission authorizes fueling, launch of Soyuz MS-26 crewed spacecraft

BAIKONUR COSMODROME /Kazakhstan/, September 11. /TASS/. The state commission has made a decision on the readiness for the upcoming launch of the Soyuz-2.1a rocket, which will put the Soyuz MS-26 manned spacecraft into orbit, Rosmosmos has told the media.
“The state commission approved the refueling of the Soyuz-2.1a rocket with the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft and its launch on September 11 at 19:23 Moscow time (16:23 GMT),” Rosmosmos said.
The spacecraft will take to the International Space Station cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner (TASS special correspondent), as well as NASA’s oldest active astronaut Donald Pettit. Cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky and NASA astronaut Jonathan Kim are the standby crew.
The crew is scheduled to return to Earth on April 1, 2025. The six-month mission envisages 42 experiments, of which 3 are to be conducted for the first time. In December, Ovchinin and Vagner will make a spacewalk to install a spectrometer for the experiment All Sky Monitor on the outer surface of the module Zvezda.