Launched on the morning of April 8 from Baikonur Cosmodrome, the Russian manned spacecraft Soyuz MS-27 with a crew of three people safely docked to the International Space Station 3 hours and 10 minutes after liftoff.

The ship docked with the Russian segment of the station in automatic mode after performing the maneuvers necessary for the approach to the ISS. “Soyuz MS-27” docked to the module “Berth” a few minutes ahead of schedule: at 11 hours 57 minutes Moscow time.

Russian cosmonauts Sergei Ryzhikov and Alexei Zubritsky, as well as NASA astronaut Jonathan Kim, arrived at the ISS on board the Soyuz MS-27. For Ryzhikov, this was the third spaceflight of his career, while Zubritsky and Kim flew to the ISS for the first time. They are expected to stay in space for eight months and return to Earth in early December.

NASA astronauts Nicole Ayers and Anne McClain, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, who flew to the ISS in mid-March on the Crew Dragon C210 Endurance spacecraft as part of the Crew-10 mission, are currently on the station. NASA astronaut Donald Pettit and Russian cosmonauts Alexei Ovchinin and Ivan Wagner are also working on the ISS. They arrived at the ISS on the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft in September 2024 and will leave it on April 20, the 70th birthday of Pettit, who is NASA’s oldest active astronaut.