Soyuz MS-05 sending 3 Expedition 52/53 crew to International Space Station; watch live

Three new crew members belonging to the Expedition 52/53 will reach the International Space Station (ISS) onboard the Soyuz MS-05 manned spacecraft after a Soyuz-FG carrier rocket will be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday. The joining of three fresh crew members will boost the  lab’s crew back to six and research with four crew including three NASA astronauts and a European flier available to operate experiments in the American segment of the laboratory.

The six will  work on hundreds of experiments in biotechnology, physical science and Earth science aboard the International Space Station. The three Astronauts are Randy Bresnik of NASA, Sergey Ryazanskiy of Roscosmos and Paolo Nespoli of European Space Agency. The liftoff  is scheduled for 03:41pm GMT (09 pm IST).

Sergey will occupy the Soyuz spacecraft’s center seat during the launch and docking. Bresnik will be the Soyuz MS-05 spaceship’s board engineer, assisting Ryazanskiy with cockpit duties during the six-hour journey from liftoff to docking.

The crew will be welcomed on the International Space Station by expedition 52 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of Roscosmos, Flight Engineers Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer of NASA.

The three will spend more than four months on the orbital complex. Ryazanskiy, Bresnik and Nespoli are scheduled to return to Earth Dec. 14 and will be replaced by another crew made up of two Americans and one Russian.

The crew will spend six hours in the Soyuz MS-05 spacecraft before docking in the space station's Rassvet module at 6 p.m.

Live coverage of the docking will begin at 5:15 p.m. on NASA TV.

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