BAIKONUR SPACEPORT (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th October, 2020) The crew of the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft � Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Ryzhikov and NASA astronaut Kathleen Rubins � has opened the hatches and moved to the International Space Station (ISS), Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos relayed on Wednesday.
Soyuz-2.1a carrier launched the Soyuz MS-17 from the Baikonur spaceport at 08:45 Moscow time (05:45 GMT). The spacecraft docked at the ISS at 11:48 Moscow time, breaking its 2017 record of five hours and 38 minutes.
The outgoing mission, consisting of Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner, and NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy, will leave the station on October 22. The new crew is expected to stay at the ISS for 177 days, until April 9, 2021.
Apart from carrying out scientific experiments, the new crew is tasked with fixing the air leak in the Russian Zvezda module, which was detected in September 2019.
