MOSCOW, October 28. /TASS/. The number of space launches in 2021 has exceeded that in 2020, according to TASS calculations.

Thus, Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos carried out 17 space launches from four spaceports: Baikonur, Plesetsk, Vostrochy, and Kourou. Thursday’s launch of the Progress MS-18 cargo spaceship was the 18th in 2021.

Launches from three spaceports are planned for November and December. Thus, a Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with a Progress M-UM and the Prichal module for the International Space Station (ISS) is expected to blast off from the Baikonur space center on November 24 and a Soyuz-ST carrier rocket with Galileo European navigation satellites will be launched from Kourou on December 1.

A manned spaceship is scheduled to be launched from Baikonur on December 8. A Soyuz MS-20 manned spaceship will take Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin and two space tourists, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his aide Yozo Hirano, to the ISS on December 8. They will spend 12 days in outer space.

Apart from that, it is planned to launch an Angara-A5 carrier rocket from Plesetsk, and a Proton-M spacecraft from Baikonur also in December.

A Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket with a Progress MS-18 cargo spacecraft was launched from Baikonur at 03:00 a.m. Moscow time on Thursday. It bears stickers with Khokhloma ornaments, which originated in the eponymous village, now part of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, and symbols in honor of the 800th anniversary of Nizhny Novgorod.

The spaceship, which is to dock to the Russian segment of the International Space Stations (ISS) at 04:34 a.m. Moscow time on October 30, will deliver to the ISS 470 kilograms of fuel, 420 liters of drinking water, 40 kilograms of air and oxygen in containers, 1,509 kilograms of equipment and materials, medical control and sanitary tools, clothing items, meals and fresh products.