NASA is about to send one of its astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) in what appears to be the first-ever Thanksgiving Day launch of an American crew member.
Blasting off early on Thursday ET from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Chris Williams will ride to orbit alongside Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket.
It’s the first spaceflight for Williams and Mikaev, while Kud-Sverchkov will be on his second mission to the space-based laboratory.
The trio are expected to stay aboard the ISS for about eight months, a little longer than the usual mission length of six months.
The seven-member Expedition 73 crew that’s currently aboard the orbital outpost will expand to 10 when the Soyuz crew arrives just over three hours after launch from Kazakhstan.
“The trio will orbit Earth twice inside the Soyuz spacecraft before its automated rendezvous and docking to the Rassvet module at 7:38 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day,” NASA said in a post on its website. “The hatches will open about an hour-and-a-half later after a series of pressure and leak checks the new station trio will enter the station for a welcome ceremony and then a safety briefing with the Expedition 73 crew.”
How to watch
A Soyuz-2-1a rocket carrying the NASA astronaut and two cosmonauts will launch the Soyuz MS-28 mission from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, about 1,300 miles (2,100 km) southeast of Moscow on Thursday.
Roscosmos is targeting 2:27 p.m. local time (4:27 a.m. ET) for the launch, so it’ll be an early one for space fans in the U.S. A livestream covering the final preparations, the launch, and the early stages of the flight will be viewable using the video player embedded at the top of this page, or via NASA’s YouTube channel, which will carry the same feed.
