BAIKONUR /Kazakhstan/, September 14. /TASS/. The International Space Station crew is anticipating the new expedition that is supposed to depart from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on September 15, says Oleg Kononenko, deputy head of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center and commander of the Roscosmos cosmonaut team.

"They expect us very much. […] We have 12 days planned for the shift change, when they will tell us about the current state of the station," Kononenko said.

According to the cosmonaut, over 70 experiments are planned for the upcoming expedition, 7 of them - new.

The Soyuz 2.1a rocket carrying the Soyuz MS-24 manned spacecraft will launch at 18:44:35 Moscow time on September 15. The mission will include Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, who will also act as TASS special reporter at the ISS, Nikolay Chub and NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara. O’Hara will return back to Earth aboard the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft, while Kononeko and Chub will continue their mission until September 2024 and return aboard the Soyuz MS-25.

Kononeko may become the first earthling to spend over 1,000 days in space.