How to Watch: Expedition 59 Launch
Two American astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut are set to join the crew aboard the International Space Station on Thursday, March 14. The trio’s arrival will return the orbiting laboratory’s population to six, including three NASA astronauts. This launch will also mark the fourth Expedition crew with two female astronauts. Live coverage will air on NASA Television and the agency’s website.
NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Christina Koch, and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos, are set to launch aboard the Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft at 2:14 p.m. CDT (12:14 a.m. March 15 Kazakhstan time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on a six-hour journey to the station.
The new crew members will dock to the Rassvet module at 8:07 p.m. Expedition 59 will begin officially at the time of docking.
About two hours later, hatches between the Soyuz and the station will open and the new residents will be greeted by NASA astronaut Anne McClain, station Commander Oleg Kononenko of Roscosmos and David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency. The current three-person crew just welcomed the first American commercial crew vehicle as it docked to the station on March 3 amidst a busy schedule of scientific research and operations since arriving in December.
Coverage of the Expedition 59 crew’s launch and docking activities are as follows (all times CDT):
Thursday, March 14:
- 1 p.m. – Soyuz MS-12 launch coverage (launch at 2:14 p.m.)
- 7:15 p.m. – Docking coverage (docking scheduled for 8:07 p.m.)
- 9:30 p.m. – Hatch opening and welcome coverage
Employees at JSC can gather in the Building 3 café to watch the blastoff on the café TVs, which will be tuned to NASA TV when launch coverage begins at 1 p.m.
Otherwise, on-site team members can view the events on JSC Cable TV channel 4-1. JSC team members with wired computer network connections can watch using the JSC EZTV IP Network TV System on channel 4541 (HD). Please note: EZTV currently requires using Internet Explorer on a Windows PC or Safari on a Mac. Mobile devices, Wi-Fi, VPN or connections from other centers are currently not supported by EZTV. Questions? Visit the FAQ site.
If you experience technical difficulties with the viewing systems, contact the IRD Customer Support Center at 281-244-6367.
Expedition 59 crew members Christina Koch of NASA, Alexey
Ovchinin of Roscosmos and Nick Hague of NASA during pre-launch training. Image Credit: NASA
The crew members of
Expeditions 59 and 60 will continue work on hundreds
of experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and
Earth science aboard the humanity’s only permanently occupied microgravity
laboratory.
McClain, Saint-Jacques, Hague and Koch also are all scheduled for the first spacewalks of their careers to continue upgrades to the orbital laboratory. McClain and Hague are scheduled to begin work to upgrade the power system March 22, and McClain and Koch will complete the upgrades to two station power channels during a March 29 spacewalk. This will be the first-ever spacewalk with all-female spacewalkers. Hague and Saint-Jacques will install hardware for a future science platform during an April 8 spacewalk.
Hague and Ovchinin are completing a journey that was cut short Oct. 11, when a booster separation problem with their Soyuz rocket’s first stage triggered a launch abort two minutes into the flight. They landed safely a few minutes later, after reaching the fringes of space, and were reassigned to fly again after McClain, Kononenko and Saint-Jacques launched in early December. This will be Ovchinin’s third flight into space, the second for Hague and the first for Koch. Hague, Koch and McClain are from NASA’s 2013 astronaut class, half of which were women—the highest percentage of female astronaut candidates ever selected for a class.
Keep up with the International Space Station, and its research and crews, at: http://www.nasa.gov/station
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