NASA gears up for Expedition 47 launch; announces live coverage!

Image courtesy: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani

New Delhi: NASA's Expedition 46 witnessed a historic event with its Year in Space mission coming to a successful end.

Expedition 46 included six astronauts namely, Scott Kelly, Mikhail Kornienko, Sergey Volkov, Timothy Kopra, Timothy Peake and Yuri Malenchenko.

Out of these, Scott Kelly, Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov were a part of the Year in Space mission.

Kelly and Kornienko spent 340 days in space, making the former a record holder for the most cumulative days spent in space by a NASA astronaut.

Now, the US space agency is all set to launch its next Soyuz expedition – Expedition 47, that will carry Expedition 47 Soyuz Commander Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos, Flight Engineer Jeff Williams of NASA, and Flight Engineer Oleg Skripochka of Roscosmos into orbit to begin their five and a half month mission on the International Space Station.

The launch will be aired live on NASA TV on March 18th, 2016 (March 19th, Kazakh time) at 4:30 pm EDT.

NASA today, released an image of the preparation of the launch, showing the gantry arms close around the Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft to secure the rocket, at launch pad 1 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Watch it live here:

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

Currently, the International Space Station is in the command of Timothy Kopra, along with Timothy Peake and Yuri Malenchenko, who have completed 93 days in space.