Watch Russian Soyuz rocket launch 3 spaceflyers to the ISS soon

Mike Wall
·2 min read
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A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying three Soyuz MS-25 astronauts is seen on the launch pad on March 21, 2024.
A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying three Soyuz MS-25 astronauts is seen on the launch pad on March 21, 2024.

Update for 10 am ET: Russia's Soyuz MS-25 launch of 3 astronauts to the International Space Station suffered a rare last-minute abort 21 seconds before launch today. The next launch attempt could occur on Saturday, March 23, pending resolution of the abort issue, NASA has said. Read our full story.

A Russian Soyuz rocket will launch three people, including one NASA astronaut, toward the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday morning (March 21), and you can watch the action live.

The rocket is scheduled to launch the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Thursday at 9:21 a.m. EDT (1321 GMT; 6:21 p.m. local Baikonur time).

You can watch live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency. Coverage will begin at 8:20 a.m. EDT (1220 GMT).

Related: International Space Station — Everything you need to know

Riding on Soyuz MS-25 will be NASA's Tracy C. Dyson, cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and Marina Vasilevskaya, a spaceflight participant from Belarus.

If all goes according to plan, the trio will arrive at the ISS a little more than three hours after launch, at 12:39 p.m. EDT (1639 GMT) on Thursday. You can watch that orbital rendezvous here at Space.com as well, beginning at 11:30 a.m. EDT (1530 GMT).

Coverage will resume at 2:50 p.m. EDT (1850 GMT), to show the hatches opening between the Soyuz and the ISS and air welcoming remarks from the orbiting lab's current residents.

three smiling astronauts (two women and one man) in white spacesuits sit in front of their national flags against a dark background
three smiling astronauts (two women and one man) in white spacesuits sit in front of their national flags against a dark background

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Thursday's launch will kick off the third spaceflight for Dyson, the fourth for Novitskiy and the first for Vasilevskaya. The latter two spaceflyers will be in orbit for just 12 days; they'll come back to Earth on April 2 aboard a different Soyuz, along with NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara, who's wrapping up a 6.5-month stint on the ISS.

Dyson will live aboard the orbiting lab for six months, eventually coming home in September with Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub of Roscosmos, who are conducting a yearlong mission on the ISS.

The Soyuz mission will be the first of two launches to the ISS on Thursday, if all goes according to plan: SpaceX is scheduled to launch a robotic cargo mission to the station on Thursday at 4:55 p.m. EDT (2055 GMT). You can watch that liftoff at Space.com as well.

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