Alexander Misurkin – The first on-orbit reporter for TASS!
Baykonur Cosmodrome reports that, on the 8th of December, the “Soyuz-2.1a” rocket, including the “Soyuz MS-20” spaceship, launched from platform №31 (“Vostok”) with three people on board: cosmonaut , Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his business assistant Yozo Hirano.
On the 17th of November TASS, an informational agency, and Roscosmos signed a memorandum of cooperation, which concerns the creation of the agency’s correspondent point at the ISS! Now it will be possible for us to read all the news about space (including pictures and videos) directly on TASS’s social media pages.
The agency’s first on-orbit reporter is Alexander Misurkin – a Roscosmos cosmonaut and Hero of Russia. We are proud that one of the special event during the last season of our Festival was held by Alexander!
ISFF “Tsiolkovsky” congratulates our colleague in space and wishes him lots of exciting tasks on the Earth’s orbit!
The spaceship and the ISS’s convergence will use a 4-orbit scheme and is estimated to take only 6 hours and 3 minutes. The docking of “Soyuz MS-20” is scheduled for 4:41 PM (Moscow Time). The guests will station themselves on a mini-research module “Poisk” (eng.“Search”). Aside from space tourism, which is one of the main interests of our Japanese guests, the main goal of the expedition is of a slightly different kind – the holiday kind: to deliver New Year presents and tasty treats for the Russian crew members! That makes approximately 162 kg of food, including 13 kg of fresh fruit! Moreover, the package also contains expendable materials and supplies for conducting medical and biological research and scientific experiments so that the space holidays don’t seem too long.
The guests will spend 12 days in orbit, and on the morning of the 20th of December Misurkin, Maezawa and Hirano will be back on Earth.