Watch live: Soyuz rocket launch features UAE guest cosmonaut
This article, Watch live: Soyuz rocket launch features UAE guest cosmonaut, originally appeared on CBSNews.com
Engineers have readied a Soyuz rocket for launch Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to ferry a Russian commander, a NASA co-pilot and a United Arab Emirates guest cosmonaut to the International Space Station, kicking off an unprecedented schedule that includes up to a dozen spacewalks before the end of the year.
Soyuz MS-15/61S commander Oleg Skripochka is expected to be in the command module's center seat, flanked on the left by flight engineer Jessica Meir and on the right by Hazzaa Ali Almansoori. Liftoff is targeted for 9:57:43 a.m. EDT (6:57 p.m. local time), the moment Earth's rotation carries the pad into the plane of the station's orbit.
If all goes well, Skripochka and Meir will monitor an automated four-orbit rendezvous with the space station, moving in for docking at the aft port of the Russian Zvezda module at 3:45 p.m. ET.
The Soyuz MS-15/61S spacecraft shortly after it was hauled to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan earlier this week. NASA/Bill Ingalls
As flight engineer No. 1, Meir — who holds a private pilot's license and a doctorate in marine biology — will serve as Skripochka's backup in the Soyuz's cramped cockpit, ready to take over in an emergency and fly the spacecraft if needed. She said learning her role and responsibilities in Russian posed a major challenge.
"It was one of the most incredible things I've experienced," she said. "I very much appreciated the role being in the left seat, which as you know is really the co-pilot's seat in the Soyuz spacecraft. So we have a lot of responsibilities to make sure we get to the space station safely and effectively and then again for landing.
"Luckily, I really like foreign languages, so that's been part of the fun. But it has been incredibly difficult. First of all, I'm a biologist, a physiologist, so I didn't have that background as a test pilot. And secondly, doing that in Russian is probably the even more challenging part. But ... there are amazing training teams here that have taught us everything we need to know."
Standing by to welcome them aboard the space station will be two cosmonauts, three NASA astronauts and an Italian: Expedition 60 commander Alexey Ovchinin, fellow cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov, Nick Hague, Christina Koch, Drew Morgan and Luca Parmitano.
Skripochka is making his third trip to the station and will serve as commander of Expedition 62 when it begins in February.
Flight engineer Jessica Meir seen during training in a Soyuz simulator at Star City near Moscow. Meir will serve as co-pilot, assisting commander Oleg Skripochka during the climb to space and rendezvous with the International Space Station. NASA
"He's a great guy," Meir said. "He's an experienced cosmonaut, so he brings a lot of knowledge and experience to the table for us. It's my first spaceflight and Hazzaa Ali Almansoori, the very first astronaut from the United Arab Emirates, is also brand new, he's only been training as an astronaut for a year. So we often look to Oleg for advice."
Almansoori is the tenth "Spaceflight Participant" to visit the lab complex and the first since Cirque du Soleil's Guy Laliberte in 2009.
"This mission is a great milestone, for me personally and for my country, the United Arab Emirates, and for the whole Arab region in general," Almansoori said in a preflight briefing. "I'm looking forward to joining the crew on the station and to work with them on a daily basis and to conduct experiments. I'm looking forward to coming back with knowledge and experience to share with everyone."
A jet fighter pilot, Almansoori is sponsored by the UAE government. But as with earlier "space tourists," he will enjoy a relatively short stay in orbit — eight days — before returning to Earth on October 3 with Ovchinin and Hague, who are wrapping up a 202-day mission.
Ovchinin, Hague and Koch took off aboard the Soyuz MS-12/58S spacecraft on March 14. Koch's stay aboard the station has been extended to February and she will join Skvortsov and Parmitano for the ride home aboard their Soyuz MS-13/59S spacecraft after nearly a year — 328 days — in space.
Koch will set a new record for longest single flight by a female astronaut December 28, moving past Peggy Whitson's mark of 289 days.
Almansoori will take Koch's seat aboard the MS-12/58S ferry ship coming down Octotber 3. Morgan, who launched with Skvortsov and Parmitano on July 20, will join Skripochka and Meir when they return to Earth next April. His flight will span 255 days.
The Soyuz MS-15/61S crew (left to right): Hazzaa Ali Almansoori, representing United Arab Emirates; vehicle commander Oleg Skripochka, a veteran cosmonaut making his third flight; and NASA flight engineer Jessica Meir, a physiologist making her first space flight. NASA
The Soyuz launching Wednesday, along with Japan's launch of an HTV cargo ship Tuesday (U.S. time), kicks off one of the most challenging station schedules ever attempted with up to 11 U.S. spacewalks planned between now and the end of the year and a Russian EVA in November.
Along with the HTV-8 arrival Saturday, the crew expects to welcome three more cargo ships and, possibly, Boeing's CST-100 Starliner crew ferry ship if NASA clears it for launch before the end of the year on a long-awaited unpiloted test flight.
Boeing and SpaceX are both building commercial crew ferry ships to end NASA's sole reliance on the Soyuz. But the program has suffered a series of funding shortfalls and technical problems, and it's not yet clear when either company will be clear to launch astronaut crews on initial test flights.
It's a critical issue for NASA because the Russians only plan to launch two Soyuz spacecraft next year, one in March and the other in October. In the absence of an American ferry ship, the station crew will drop from six to three next April when Skripochka, Meir and Morgan return to Earth.
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