(MENAFN- QNA) Russia's Piloted spaceship Soyuz TMA-15M with international crew of a new International Space Station ISS expedition will be launched to the ISS from the Baikonur space centre overnight to November 24.
"The blast-off of booster Soyuz-FG with spaceship Soyuz TMA-15M is scheduled at 00.01 Moscow time on November 24," Russia's Federal Space Agency told Russia's (TASS).
This launch is specific, as the rocket will be launched from the 31st launching site, but not the first Gagarin's one, due to planned repair on the infrastructure of the first launching site.
The 31st launching site, a backup to Gagarin's lift-off site, was commissioned in 1962. Launches of rockets Soyuz with different spacecraft within federal space programmes and international projects and space freighters Progress are made from this launching site. A total of 379 launches, including 13 manned blast-offs, were made from this launching pad.
For the first time since 1984 piloted spaceship Soyuz TMA-06M was launched from the 31st pad in October 2012.
This launch is also specific due to European Space Agency ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti participating in the ISS expedition. She is the first female ESA astronaut who will fly to the ISS for the last 13 years. Previous European woman astronaut from France Claudie Haignere flied on the orbital station in 2001.
Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov will pilot spaceship
Soyuz TMA-15M. He and his fellow crewmembers Cristoforetti and American astronaut Terry Virts will join Alexander Samokutyayev, Yelena Serova and Barry Wilmore, who have been working on the ISS since September 2014, on board the orbital station. The new ISS crew are planned to stay on the orbit for 169 days.
Soyuz TMA-15 will dock with the ISS according to a shortened, six hour scheme, docking to the Russian module Rassvet (MIM-1) of the orbital station already at 05.50am Moscow time (2.50am GMT) on November 24. Among advantages of the shortened docking procedure is that the crew have to adapt to zero gravity in the closed space of spaceship Soyuz where it is quite cold on the top of it. Zero gravity starts affecting the human organism in about five hours, so, spacemen will be adapting to zero gravity already on board the ISS in comfortable conditions. The Soyuz TMA-08M craft has made the first piloted flight on the shortened procedure, when the spaceship makes only four orbit rotations, in March 2013.
The new ISS crew will perform a broad programme of more than 100 applied scientific research and experiments, plans operations with Russian space freighters Progress and European spacecraft ATV-5. No spacewalks are planned in Russian programme.
Military and civilian jets and helicopters will safeguard the Soyuz TMA-15M spaceship during all its flight in case of emergency landing.
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