ISS, September 15. /TASS/. The Soyuz MS-24 manned spaceship, which was blasted off from the Baikonur Spaceport on Friday, has docked to the Rassvet (MIM-1) module of the International Space Station’s (ISS) Russian segment, according to a Roscosmos broadcast.
The spacecraft’s crew are Oleg Kononenko, deputy chief of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center and commander of the Roscosmos cosmonaut team, who will become the fourth TASS special correspondent at the orbital outpost, cosmonaut Nikolay Chub and NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara.
O’Hara will return to Earth aboard the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft in the spring of 2024, while the space mission of Kononenko and Chub will last until September next year. Upon completing their mission, the Russian cosmonauts will return to Earth aboard the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft. Kononenko has a chance to become the first human in history to spend over 1,000 days in space as part of his year-long expedition.
The spacecraft is also loaded with around 120 kg of payload, including photo and video equipment, food rations, personal items and equipment for scientific experiments. Over 70 experiments and four spacewalks are planned for the upcoming expedition.
Kononenko will become the fourth TASS special reporter on board the station. He will carry the news agency’s space mascot toy Inotasya, whose design and name were chosen by the TASS staff.
On November 17, 2021, TASS and Roscosmos signed a memorandum of cooperation, under which the news agency opened an office onboard the ISS. Cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin was the first special correspondent on the ISS. His flight lasted 12 days. He was succeeded by Oleg Artemyev in March 2022. Now, Dmitry Petelin is working at the TASS correspondent office on the ISS. Deputy chief of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center Oleg Kononenko will become the fourth TASS special reporter on board the station.