LAUNCH AND DOCKING OF SOYUZ MS-21 TO ISS, Mar 18, 2022, Kazakhstan/Earth orbit, 11:55 am ET/3:05 pm ET

Russia will launch its next crew to the International Space Station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on March 18, 2022 .

• Launch, 11:55 am ET, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan (NASA TV begins 11:15 am ET);
• Docking, 3:05 pm ET (NASA TV begins 2:15 pm ET);
• Hatch opening/welcome ceremony, 5:30 pm ET (NASA TV begins 5:15 pm ET)

All three crew members are professional Russian cosmonauts from Roscosmos.

• Oleg Artemeyev
• Denis Matveev
• Sergei Korsakov

The last all-Russian crew, launched in October 2021, was one professional cosmonaut and two space tourists (a film director and an actress shooting scenes for a movie).

Usually a NASA astronaut travels to and from ISS on Soyuz, but the US-Russian contract — where NASA paid Russia for the service — expired in 2021. A new “crew exchange” agreement for Americans to continue flying on Soyuz and Russians to fly on the U.S. Crew Dragon on a no-exchange-of-funds basis was said to be close to completion early in 2022. Whether that will proceed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 remains to be seen.