KOROLEV /Moscow Region/, March 18. /TASS/. The docking of the Soyuz MS-21 spacecraft (also referred to as S. P. Korolev) with three cosmonauts on board will be carried out in manual mode, the press service of Russia’s state-run space corporation Roscosmos said on Friday.
"The docking is being carried out in manual mode. Everything is proceeding normally," the press service said.
A Soyuz-2.1a space rocket carrying the S.P. Korolyov spacecraft (Soyuz MS-21) with a crew of three - Oleg Artemiev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov - blasted off from the Baikonur space center at 18:55 on Friday. The spacecraft was named after renowned Soviet spacecraft designer, founder of crewed space programs Sergey Korolyov.
It has a crew of three - Oleg Artemiev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov. For the first time in many years all three professional cosmonauts going to the ISS are Russian.
Artemiev, Matveyev and Korsakov will spend 195 days on the ISS to return to Earth on September 30.
During the space mission the crew is to stage more than 50 experiments in space biology and physiology, materials processing, cosmic ray physics and other fields. As Artemiev said, there will be seven spacewalks. One will be in cooperation with Italian astronaut Samantha Christoforetti, and all others with Denis Matveyev.