SOYUZ MS-24 LAUNCH AND DOCKING, Sept 15, 2023, Kazakhstan/Earth orbit, 11:44 am ET/2:56 pm ET/4:45 pm ET

Update, September 9: The launch remains on track for September 15 at 11:44 am ET.  NASA TV launch coverage begins at 10:45 am ET.

Docking is scheduled for just over 3 hours later at 2:56 pm ET. NASA TV coverage of rendezvous and docking begins at 2:00 pm ET.

Coverage of hatch opening and welcoming remarks begins at 4:45 pm ET. From the NASA TV schedule:

Update, August 16:  The launch is still on track for September 15, 2023. NASA and Roscosmos have not announced the launch time, but others report it as 3:44 pm UTC, which is 11:44 am EDT.

Original Entry: Roscosmos announced on March 24, 2023 that Soyuz MS-24 will launch on September 15, 2023.

Russia had to reschedule its crew launches to ISS because of the December 2022 coolant leak on Soyuz MS-22.  The decision was made that Soyuz MS-22 was not safe to return its crew — Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitri Petelin and NASA’s Frank Rubio — to Earth, so the next spacecraft, Soyuz MS-23, would have to be launched empty to bring them home.

The crew that should have launched in March 2023 on Soyuz MS-23 — Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub and NASA’s Loral O’Hara — would have to wait until Soyuz MS-24.

Roscosmos spent many weeks deciding when Soyuz MS-24 would launch. The decision affects how much longer the Prokopyev crew must extend their mission beyond the original 6 months (they were to return in March). Ultimately, Roscosmos decided to maintain the original crew cadence, with the Prokopyev crew remaining until the next regularly scheduled crew rotation in September 2023. So they will spend almost a year in space.

Under the plan announced in TASS on March 24, Soyuz MS-24 with the Kononenko crew will launch on September 15 and the Prokopvev crew will return on Soyuz MS-23 on September 27.

(Soyuz MS-22 will return to Earth empty on March 28, 2023. Soyuz MS-23 was launched empty and docked with the ISS in February 2023.)