Soyuz MS-05 Manned Spacecraft to Be Launched From Baikonur on Friday

A Soyuz-FG carrier rocket with the Soyuz MS-05 manned spacecraft will be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday to deliver the crew of Expedition 52/53 to the International Space Station (ISS).

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The members of the crew are Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryazansky, NASA astronaut Randolph Bresnik and European Space Agency's astronaut Paolo Nespoli. They are expected to spend 139 days in space.

The launch is scheduled for 06:41 p.m. Moscow time (15:41 GMT), with the Soyuz MS-05 set to separate from the third stage minutes after the start. The spacecraft will then enter the approach trajectory with the ISS and is planned to dock with the station six hours later.

Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and US astronauts Jack Fischer and Peggy Whitson of the Expedition 52, currently on board the ISS, are due to return to Earth in September.