ISS, November 28. /TASS/. Cosmonauts of the International Space Station (ISS)’s Russian segment have made a cake to greet their colleagues, Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, Sergey Mikayev, and NASA astronaut Christopher Williams, TASS correspondent aboard the ISS, Alexey Zubritsky, said.

"We were looking forward to the arrival of Expedition 74 aboard Soyuz MS-28, and made a holiday cake for them," he said.

The Soyuz-2.1a launch vehicle, carrying the Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft, blasted off from the Baikonur space center on Thursday at 12:28 p.m. Moscow time (9:28 a.m. GMT). The spacecraft docked with the Rassvet module at 3:38 p.m. Moscow time (12:38 p.m. GMT). The crew is expected to spend 242 days in the orbit and return to the Earth in late July 2026.

Their eight-month mission will feature over 40 scientific experiments and two spacewalks. The first extravehicular activity will focus on installing the Sun-Terahertz instrument, designed to predict solar flares. During the second spacewalk, cosmonauts will perform maintenance on the Zarya module and replace worn components.