Thursday, July 27, 2017

Soyuz MS-05 is fixin’ to blast off tomorrow

Soyuz MS-05 crew (L-R): Paolo Nespoli, Sergey Ryazansky, Randy Bresnik

The 134th flight of the Soyuz program will launch tomorrow (July 28, 2017) from Baikonur, Kazakhstan 10:30am-ish for us in the Baltimore Daylight Time Zone. This will be Expedition 52 to the International Space Station.  Its crew consists of Commander Sergey Ryazansky (Russian), Flight Engineer Paolo Nespoli (Italian) and Flight Engineer Randy Bresnik (Kentuckian).  They will spend five months living, working and conducting scientific experiments. 

Nespoli has been to the ISS twice before already.  He flew on the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-120) back in 2007 and went back in December 2010 – May 2011 as part of the Soyuz TMA-20.

Ryazansky flew on Soyuz TMA-10M to the ISS (Expedition 37) and stayed from September 2013 March 2014.  It was his first spaceflight.

Bresnik (a Virgo like me) traveled on the Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-129) in November 2009.  He only spent 11 days on the ISS, but performed 2 EVAs and had a baby while in orbit. Like Ryazansky, he’s been to the ISS once and it was his first spaceflight.



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