Watch Russian Soyuz rocket launch 3 spaceflyers to the ISS on March 23

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The Soyuz MS-25 launch is scheduled for 8:36 a.m. ET on Saturday (March 23).

A Russian Soyuz rocket will launch three people, including one NASA astronaut, toward the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday morning (March 23), and you can watch the action live.

The rocket is scheduled to launch the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Saturday at 8:36 a.m. EDT (1236 GMT). You can watch live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency. Coverage will begin at 8:00 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT).

MS-25 was originally supposed to lift off on Thursday (March 21), but an electrical issue with the Soyuz rocket forced an abort 21 seconds before the planned launch. 

Related: International Space Station — Everything you need to know

Riding on Soyuz MS-25 will be NASA's Tracy C. Dyson, cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and Marina Vasilevskaya, a spaceflight participant from Belarus. 

If all goes according to plan, the trio will arrive at the ISS on Monday (March 25) at 11:09 a.m. EDT (1503 GMT). You can watch that orbital rendezvous here at Space.com as well, beginning at 10:15 a.m. EDT (1415 GMT) on Monday. 

Coverage will resume at 1:15 p.m. EDT (1715 GMT), to show the hatches opening between the Soyuz and the ISS and air welcoming remarks from the orbiting lab's current residents. Hatch opening is expected around 1:40 p.m. EDT (1740 GMT).

NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson (left), Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy (center), and spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya (right) of Belarus pose for a portrait at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center on Nov. 2, 2023. (Image credit: GCTC/Andrey Shelepin)
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Saturday's launch will kick off the third spaceflight for Dyson, the fourth for Novitskiy and the first for Vasilevskaya. The latter two spaceflyers will be in orbit for just 12 days or so; they'll come back to Earth in early April aboard a different Soyuz, along with NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara, who's wrapping up a 6.5-month stint on the ISS.

Dyson will live aboard the orbiting lab for six months, eventually coming home in September with Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub of Roscosmos, who are conducting a yearlong mission on the ISS.

The Soyuz mission will be the second launch to the ISS in just a few days; SpaceX launched a robotic cargo mission to the station on Thursday at 4:55 p.m. EDT (2055 GMT).

Editor's note: This story was updated at 5:15 p.m. EDT on March 22 with the new target launch and docking dates of March 23 and March 25, respectively.

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Mike Wall
Mike Wall
Senior Space Writer

Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.

1 Comment Comment from the forums
  • amegahed
    Tracy Dyson has no title and Marina Vasilevskaya is referred to a "spaceflight participant". Regardless of level of training or background, if you agree to strap yourself to a rocket to be hurled into space, you deserve the respect of being called an astronaut.
    Reply