MOSCOW, September 6. /TASS/. The flight of Russia’s Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft to bring three crew members to the International Space Station (ISS) will be carried under the super-short two-orbit flight scheme, the press service of Russia’s state-run space corporation Roscosmos has told TASS.
"The flight of the [Soyuz MS-24] spacecraft will take three hours and 14 minutes and will be carried out under the two-orbit scheme," the press service said.
The blastoff is scheduled for 6:44:36 p.m. Moscow time on September 15.
The basic crew of the 70th and 71st space expeditions to the orbital outpost comprises Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolay Chub and NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara. Their backup teammates are Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and Tracy Dyson.
O’Hara will return to Earth aboard the Soyuz MS-24 spaceship in the spring of 2024 while the space mission of Kononenko and Chub will last until September next year. Upon their mission completion, the Russian cosmonauts will return to Earth aboard the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft. Kononenko may become the Earth’s first human to spend over 1,000 days in space as part of his year-long expedition.
The previous record for the shortest flight to the ISS was set during the Soyuz MS-17 mission, which reached the ISS in three hours and three minutes.