Russian rocket launch of 3 astronauts to ISS targeted for March 23 after abort

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Liftoff is now scheduled for 8:36 a.m. ET on Saturday (March 23).

a brown-and-white rocket stands upright on a launch pad as two metallic skeletal structures fall away from it
In this 30-second exposure photograph, the gantry arms are seen closing around the Soyuz rocket at launch pad at Site 31, Monday, March 18, 2024, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. (Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

A Russian Soyuz rocket is now scheduled to send three astronauts toward the ISS on Saturday (March 23), two days after a rare abort scuttled its first try.

The rocket was supposed to launch the crewed Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft on Thursday (March 21) from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. That attempt was aborted just 21 seconds before liftoff, however, after some of the rocket's hardware experienced an unexpected voltage drop.

That problem has now been fixed to the satisfaction of Russia's space agency Roscosmos, which has set liftoff for 8:36 a.m. EDT (1236 GMT) on Saturday. You can watch the action live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA and Roscosmos.

Related: International Space Station — Everything you need to know

The Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft will carry NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson, Roscosmos' Oleg Novitskiy and spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus to the International Space Station (ISS).

If all goes according to plan, the trio will arrive on Monday morning (March 25), docking with the station's Prichal module at 11:09 a.m. EDT (1509 GMT). You can watch that rendezvous here at Space.com as well.

Dyson will live aboard the ISS for six months, but Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya will come back to Earth after just 12 days or so. Vasilevskaya, who works as a flight attendant, will break ground on her brief mission, becoming the first Belarusian woman in space.

The Soyuz MS-25 crew waves farewell before an attempted launch to the International Space Station on a Soyuz rocket at Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. They are: Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus (top), Tracey Caldwell Dyson of NASA (center) and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy. (Image credit: NASA TV)
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Despite the Soyuz MS-25 abort, a spacecraft still launched toward the ISS on Thursday — SpaceX's robotic Dragon capsule, which was sent skyward by a Falcon 9 rocket.

Dragon is carrying about 3 tons of food, scientific hardware and supplies to the station on this mission, the 30th that SpaceX is flying to the orbiting lab under its contract with NASA. The capsule is scheduled to dock with the ISS on Saturday at around 7:30 a.m. EST (1130 GMT), about an hour before Soyuz MS-25 lifts off.

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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.