Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

How to watch three astronauts launch to the ISS on Friday

By

On Friday, September 15, a crew of three astronauts will be launching on a Russian Soyuz rocket headed for the International Space Station (ISS). The trio comprises NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, who will be flying in the Soyuz MS-24 mission and will spend approximately six months aboard the orbiting space station before returning to Earth.

NASA Live: Official Stream of NASA TV

NASA will be live-streaming the launch and docking of the mission, and we have the details on how you can watch the live stream for free below.

Recommended Videos

What to expect from the launch

This bottom up view shows the Soyuz MS-24 rocket’s first stage boosters as the spacecraft stands at its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
This bottom-up view shows the Soyuz MS-24 rocket’s first stage boosters as the spacecraft stands at its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. NASA/Bill Ingalls

The trip will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, with launch scheduled for 11:44 a.m. ET (8:44 a.m. PT) on Friday. The journey will take just a few hours, with docking scheduled for Friday afternoon when the trio will join the current station crew of seven. The current crew consists of the four SpaceX Crew-7 astronauts who arrived last month, plus the Soyuz MS-23 crew of three who have been on board since February.

Two Roscosmos cosmonauts, Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, will be in charge of monitoring the arrival of the MS-24 at the station. “After the new crew docks and after leak and pressure checks, Prokopyev will open the station’s Rassvet hatch while Kononenko and Chub will open the Soyuz hatch,” NASA writes. “The new trio will enter the orbital outpost, join the station crew for a welcoming ceremony, participate in a safety briefing, and begin a six-month space research mission.”

Within the next few weeks, the Soyuz MS-23 crew will return home, leaving just the Crew-7 and MS-24 members on the station. The MS-24 crew includes NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, who has just set a new record for the longest single stay in space by a NASA astronaut.

How to watch the launch

NASA TV will live-stream the MS-24 launch with coverage beginning at 10:45 a.m. ET (7:45 a.m. PT) on Friday. The Soyuz craft is scheduled to dock with the ISS at 2:56 p.m. ET (11:56 a.m. PT), with coverage for this section of the mission beginning at 2 p.m. ET (11 a.m. PT). You can also catch the opening of the hatch and welcome from the current ISS crew starting at 4:45 p.m. ET (1:45 p.m. ET).

You can watch NASA TV either by heading to NASA’s YouTube page or by using the video embedded near the top of this story.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Meet the SpaceX Crew-10 astronauts
spacex crew 10 revealed jsc2024e034372 alt 1

A new crew of astronauts will be heading to the International Space Station in just a few weeks. Crew-9 will travel aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. But ahead of their launch, NASA has revealed the four astronauts who will make up the following crew, Crew-10. They will launch to the ISS next year, around February 2025.

Crew-10 will consist of NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, plus Takuya Onishi of Japanese space agency JAXA and Kirill Peskov of Russian space agency Roscosmos.

Read more
Why SpaceX is delivering a penny, a hexnut, and two balloons to the ISS on Saturday
spacex ng 21 iss launch live stream unnamed 1

On Saturday, NASA is working with SpaceX and Northrop Grumman to launch a resupply mission to the International Space Station. Loaded up with cargo and scientific experiments, the NG-21 mission will launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, and the launch of the uncrewed mission will be live-streamed so you can watch at home.
What to expect from the launch
The mission will use a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft that will be filled with more than 8,200 pounds of supplies. That includes a range of science experiments, including testing part of a water recovery system, an investigation into how to produce stem cells in microgravity, and studies on how the DNA of microorganisms is affected by spaceflight.

The water recovery test uses beads packed close together to understand how filtration systems respond to microgravity, by looking at how both gas and liquid moves simultaneously through porous material. The design of the system could be used for water filtration systems on the moon or Mars, and could also be used on Earth for water purification or for heating and cooling systems.

Read more
Head out tonight for the chance to see one of three meteor showers
A shower of Perseid meteors lights up the sky in 2009 in this NASA time-lapse image.

It's an exciting time to be a sky-watcher this week, as no less than three meteor showers are occurring. If you're in an area with clear skies and you're far from city lights, head out after dark for the chance to view one of these beautiful events.

Meteor showers occur regularly, as Earth passes through clouds of debris in its orbit. As it passes through these debris clouds, small pieces of the debris burn up in the planet's atmosphere and are visible as the streaks of light we call meteor showers.

Read more