Hatches Between Soyuz and Station Closed

At the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Expedition 63 crewmembers Ivan Vagner (left) and Anatoly Ivanishin (center) of Roscosmos and Chris Cassidy of NASA (right) pose for pictures March 25 in front of their Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft as part of pre-launch training activities.

At 4:24 p.m. EDT, the hatch closed between the Soyuz spacecraft and the International Space Station in preparation for undocking. NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner of the Russian space agency Roscosmos are scheduled to undock their Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft at 7:32 p.m.

NASA Television will air live coverage of the undocking beginning at 7 p.m.; their landing in Kazakhstan is targeted for approximately 10:55 p.m.

At the time of undocking, Expedition 64 will begin aboard the station, with Kate Rubins of NASA, new station commander Sergey Ryzhikov and cosmonaut Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of Roscosmos comprising a three-person station crew until the arrival of the SpaceX Crew-1 mission targeted to launch in November. NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, will launch on the first long-duration commercial crew mission to the station.

Learn more about space station activities by following @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.



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