Dsf news: – The Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft blasted off flawlessly from the historic Baikonur Cosmodrome on Thursday, carrying NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner toward the International Space Station (ISS).
The Soyuz-FG rocket lifted off at 11:36 local time (05:36 UTC) under clear skies, marking another successful crewed mission under the long-standing NASA-Roscosmos seat-exchange agreement. The launch went exactly as planned, with the spacecraft separating from the third stage nine minutes after liftoff and entering its preliminary orbit.
Veteran NASA astronaut Don Pettit is flying his fourth mission to space, while commander Alexey Ovchinin is on his third flight and flight engineer Ivan Vagner is making his second trip to the orbital laboratory. The trio will spend approximately six months aboard the ISS as part of Expedition 72/73, conducting scientific experiments, station maintenance, and technology demonstrations.
“Soyuz remains one of the most reliable spacecraft in history,” said NASA’s ISS Program Manager Joel Montalbano during the live broadcast. “Today’s successful Soyuz MS-28 launch continues decades of safe human spaceflight cooperation between the United States and Russia.”
The crew is scheduled to dock with the ISS’s Prichal module around two days after launch, joining the current Expedition 72 crew already on board. This mission comes at a time when commercial crew vehicles like SpaceX’s Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner are gradually taking over U.S. astronaut transportation, yet the Soyuz continues to serve as a critical lifeboat and backup transportation system.
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The successful Soyuz MS-28 launch once again proves the enduring reliability of the 60-year-old Soyuz design, which has now flown more than 170 crewed missions since 1967 with an outstanding safety record in recent decades.
