Uploaded July 2016 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
Expedition 48-49 Soyuz Commander Anatoly Ivanishin of Roscosmos and Flight Engineers Kate Rubins of NASA and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launched on the Russian Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft July 7 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to begin a two-day journey to the International Space Station and the start of a four-month mission. The rocket carrying the Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft — the MS stands for “modernized systems” — thundered to life at 9:36 p.m. EDT (GMT-4; 7:36 a.m. Thursday local time) and quickly climbed away from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, launching directly into the plane of the space station’s orbit. At the moment of liftoff, the space station was passing 250 miles above southern Cameroon near the border of Equatorial Guinea. The flight plan calls for the Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft, launched into the same orbital plane but at a lower altitude, to carry out a two-day rendezvous, catching up with the outpost early Saturday and gliding to a docking at the Earth-facing Rassvet module around 12:12 a.m.
Note: Video is the property of NASA and Roscosmos. It is being used for entertainment purposes only.
Expedition 48-49 Soyuz Commander Anatoly Ivanishin of Roscosmos and Flight Engineers Kate Rubins of NASA and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launched on the Russian Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft July 7 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to begin a two-day journey to the International Space Station and the start of a four-month mission. The rocket carrying the Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft — the MS stands for “modernized systems” — thundered to life at 9:36 p.m. EDT (GMT-4; 7:36 a.m. Thursday local time) and quickly climbed away from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, launching directly into the plane of the space station’s orbit. At the moment of liftoff, the space station was passing 250 miles above southern Cameroon near the border of Equatorial Guinea. The flight plan calls for the Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft, launched into the same orbital plane but at a lower altitude, to carry out a two-day rendezvous, catching up with the outpost early Saturday and gliding to a docking at the Earth-facing Rassvet module around 12:12 a.m.
Note: Video is the property of NASA and Roscosmos. It is being used for entertainment purposes only.
