The Soyuz MS-26 crewed mission is set to fly NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner to the International Space Station (ISS). Launch is scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 11, at 16:23 UTC from Site 31/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz spacecraft will reach the ISS just over three hours later, with docking expected at 19:33 UTC.
Soyuz MS-26 is commanded by Ovchinin, with Vagner and Pettit serving as the mission’s flight engineers. Once the spacecraft docks to the Rassvet module on the Station’s Russian segment, the veteran crew will become part of the Station’s Expedition 71 crew. They will conduct a handover process with the Soyuz MS-25 return crew of Roscosmos’ Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, as well as Tracy Caldwell-Dyson of NASA.
The Soyuz MS-26 crew. From left to right: Ivan Vagner, Alexey Ovchinin, and Don Pettit. (Credit: NASA/JSC)
Alexey Ovchinin, born on Sept. 28, 1971, in Rybinsk, Russia, is flying on his third orbital spaceflight, having been onboard Soyuz TMA-20M and Soyuz TM-12. Both of these missions traveled to the ISS, and Ovchinin has spent a total of 374 days in space across Expeditions 47/48 and 59/60. He also has conducted one EVA at the Station.
The veteran military instructor pilot and cosmonaut has one more Soyuz launch on his resume in addition to the previous two. Ovchinin commanded the Soyuz MS-10 mission, for which NASA’s Nick Hague served as the flight engineer, and both men were scheduled to become part of Expedition 57 aboard the ISS. Soyuz MS-10 launched on Oct. 11, 2018, but an issue during the separation of the rocket’s four side boosters caused the vehicle to go out of control.
The launch abort system worked as intended and moved the Soyuz spacecraft away from the tumbling rocket. Soyuz MS-10 reached an altitude of 93 km, just short of the Karman line.
After the spacecraft reached apogee, Soyuz MS-10 landed safely 402 km east of Baikonur and 20 km east of the Kazakh city of Zhezkazgan. The crew experienced six to seven times the force of gravity during the capsule’s ballistic descent but were unharmed. Ovchinin and Hague were later reassigned to Soyuz MS-12, when they flew with NASA’s Christina Koch serving as the third crew member.
Ivan Vagner, born on July 10, 1985, in Severoonezhsk, Russia, is flying on his second mission to space and the ISS. He launched into space aboard Soyuz MS-16 and spent over 195 days in orbit as part of the Expedition 62/63 crews. He was part of the MS-16 backup crew, but due to a medical issue with one of the primary crew members, the secondary crew was called up.
Soyuz MS-16 approaches ISS before docking. (Credit: NASA TV)
Vagner was an engineer and assistant flight manager at RSC Energia for the Space Station program before being named to the cosmonaut corps. He has a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering from the Baltic State Technical University in Saint Petersburg.
NASA astronaut Don Pettit, born on April 20, 1955 in Silverton, Oregon, is flying on his fourth mission into space. The former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist, who has a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Arizona, was selected as an astronaut as part of the 1996 Group 16 “The Sardines” astronaut class.
The “Sardines” — the NASA Group 16 astronaut class of 1996. (Credit: NASA)
Pettit’s first launch was aboard STS-113, when the Space Shuttle Endeavour flew to the ISS in November 2002 on ISS assembly flight 11A with the P1 truss. This flight was the last Shuttle flight before Columbia launched on the STS-107 16-day Spacehab research mission in January 2003, which would ultimately result in the loss of the Shuttle during reentry and the grounding of the Shuttle program.
During STS-113, Don Pettit, Roscosmos’ Nikolai Budarin, and NASA’s Ken Bowersox became the Expedition 6 crew on the ISS, which, at the time, had much fewer modules and capabilities than it does now. As a result of the Shuttle’s grounding, Pettit and Bowersox became the first US astronauts to launch into orbit aboard a Shuttle and return to space on a Soyuz capsule. Soyuz TMA-1 landed safely despite a ballistic reentry that caused it to land hundreds of miles away from its planned touchdown site.
The STS-126 and ISS Expedition 18 crews greeting each other after Endeavour’s docking. (Credit: NASA)
Pettit’s second flight was the STS-126 mission, also aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour. This mission, known as ULF2, was to deliver supplies and equipment to ISS. The mission also conducted EVAs to repair the starboard solar alpha rotary joint on the Station, though Pettit did not participate in these. He returned to Earth with Endeavour on Nov. 30, 2008.
His third flight was Soyuz TMA-03M, which launched to the ISS on Dec. 21, 2011. He became part of the Expedition 30/31 Station crews and helped to operate the Canadarm2 robotic manipulator arm when it grappled the first-ever SpaceX Dragon 1 cargo spacecraft in May 2012. Pettit also became the first person to enter a Dragon capsule on orbit, making him the first astronaut to enter a commercially operated spacecraft on orbit.
The first SpaceX Cargo Dragon 1 capsule for the COTS 2 demonstration mission before Don Pettit helped grapple the spacecraft in orbit. (Credit: NASA)
Pettit has spent a cumulative total of over 369 days in space across his three missions. He has also conducted two spacewalks, both on ISS Expedition 6, and his cumulative EVA time is 13 hours and 17 minutes. He is currently the oldest active astronaut in NASA and his experience not only includes three space missions but also a six-week expedition in Antarctica collecting meteorites that survived entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
Soyuz MS-26 is the 78th overall mission for the Soyuz 2.1a rocket subtype and the 11th crewed spaceflight — counting Virgin Galactic and New Shepard suborbital missions — this year. It is also the fifth mission of 2024 for this Soyuz subtype as well. If MS-26 launches on time, its crew will join the nine crew members on ISS, three on Tiangong, and four on Polaris Dawn in orbit. This will set a new record of 19 people on orbit at one time.
After the spacecraft’s arrival at the ISS, Expedition 71 will close out and Expedition 72 will start once Soyuz MS-25 leaves the Station on Sept. 24. Ovchinin, Vagner, and Pettit will serve on that expedition with Nick Hague, who has flown with Ovchinin twice, Aleksandr Gorbunov, Butch Wilmore, and Suni Williams.
(Lead image: Soyuz MS-26 on the launch pad before flight. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)
NSF will be experimenting with a dedicated stream, which can be viewed by all level of NSF youtube members here:
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