The Soyuz MS-26 crewed mission has flown NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner to the International Space Station (ISS). Launch took place on Wednesday, Sept. 11, at 16:23 UTC from Site 31/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz spacecraft has reached the ISS just over three hours later, with a successful docking occurring at 19:32 UTC. The crew entered ISS at 21:58 UTC.
Soyuz MS-26 is commanded by Ovchinin, with Vagner and Pettit serving as the mission’s flight engineers. Now that the spacecraft has docked to the Rassvet module on the Station’s Russian segment, the veteran crew is now 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.