50 hours of flight ahead: Soyuz MS-25 successfully launched on the second attempt

The crew will take two days to reach orbit

The manned spacecraft Soyuz MS-25 successfully launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome to the ISS at 15.36 Moscow time. On board is a crew of astronauts: Russian Oleg Novitsky, Belarusian Marina Vasilevskaya and American Tracy Dyson.

Let us remind you that their first attempt to go into orbit on Thursday, March 21, was unsuccessful. According to the head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, the launch was canceled at the last moment, during the countdown, “due to a voltage drop in the chemical current source.” As it turned out later, it was a question of the battery of one of the launch vehicle units. In other words, there was voltage in the battery, but not enough for a normal start. As a result, the automation detected a failure and interrupted the cyclogram of pre-launch operations.

It took two days to correct the situation. On Saturday, March 23, the launch vehicle launched successfully and on time. There is one caveat: at the launch on Thursday, the crew would have reached orbit in a quick, 3-hour pattern; at the launch on March 23, according to ballistics calculations, only a two-day flight pattern is possible. The docking of the Soyuz MS-25 to the Prichal module on the ISS is scheduled for March 25.

Oleg Novitsky and Marina Vasilevskaya will spend 12 days on board the station (this is a visiting expedition) and will set off on the return journey on the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft together with NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara. Marina Vasilevskaya, a flight attendant for Belavia, was selected for this expedition among many other applicants from Belarus. She is the first woman in this country to launch into space.

As for Tracy Dyson, who is now flying into orbit on the Soyuz MS-25, she will return on it only in September, with Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub.