INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION, September 12. /TASS/. Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner (who will also work as a TASS special correspondent on the orbital outpost) and NASA astronaut Donald Pettit left the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft and entered the International Space Station (ISS), Russia’s state-run space corporation said.

"Hatches are open. The [ISS] crew is greeting Alexey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Donald Pettit," Roscosmos wrote on its Telegram channel.

The Expedition 71 long-duration crew in the orbit lists Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko (a TASS special correspondent), Nikolay Chub and Alexander Grebenkin, NASA astronauts Tracy Caldwell-Dyson, Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps, and their colleagues Barry E. Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who arrived at the space station within the first Boeing Starliner manned mission.

The Soyuz-2.1a launch vehicle with the Soyuz MS-26 manned spacecraft and three crew members of the 72nd long-term expedition to the ISS has been successfully launched from the Baikonur space center at 7:23 p.m. Moscow time (5:23 p.m. GMT) and docked with the ISS at 10:33 p.m. Moscow time [7:33 p.m. GMT].

The crew is scheduled to spend 202 days in orbit and return on April 1, 2025. Their mission, lasting around six months, lists 42 scientific experiments including three performed for the first time. Ovchinin said previously that the scientific schedule includes experiments in medicine, biology, remote sensing of the Earth and other areas. Also, the crew will continue their scientific work involving a 3D bioprinter.

Also, Ovchinin and Vagner will perform a spacewalk in December to install a spectrometer on the outer surface of the Zvezda module.