At the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the ascent unit with the Soyuz-18 crewed spacecraft was transported for the final assembly of the integrated launch vehicle.
Today specialists from RSC Energia and core enterprises of Roscosmos performed a set of processing operations to load and send the spacecraft to the assembly and test facility of the launch vehicle at Site No. 31.
The launch of the Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket carrying Soyuz MS-18 is scheduled for April 9, 2021 under the program of Expeditions 65 and 66 to the International Space Station. The prime crew consists of commander Оleg Novitsky (Roscosmos), flight engineer 1 Pyotr Dubrov (Roscosmos) and flight engineer 2 Mark Vande Hei (NASA). Their backups are Roscosmos cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov, Oleg Artemyev and NASA astronaut Anne McClain.
