Tonight, a Soyuz rocket is set to launch to the International Space Station (ISS), taking three new crew members to raise the number of people on the ISS back up to its current maximum capacity of six.
On board are American Kate Rubins, Russian Anatoly Ivanishin, and Takuya Onishi from Japan. They will join Jeff Williams of NASA, and Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos (the Russian space agency), who are already on the station.
The launch, on board a newly upgraded Soyuz spacecraft in Kazakhstan, is scheduled to take place today at 9.36pm EDT (2.36am BST tomorrow). They will spend four months on the station, before returning to Earth in October. You’ll be able to watch all the coverage live on NASA TV tonight, which we’ve embedded below, so don’t forget to tune in.
This mission will begin Expedition 48/49 on the ISS. They are set to arrive in the early hours of July 8, replacing Tim Peake and co, who departed last month. The transit is a bit longer than normal so that the crew can test out the new spacecraft in orbit before it docks.
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