Photography by Bill Ingalls

Monday, July 4th, 2016 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the desert steppe of Kazakhstan, the Soyuz MS-01 was rolled out and raised to vertical in advance of the July 7th launch to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz MS-01 was rolled out by train on July 4th to “Gagarin’s Start”, where Yuri Gagarin first launched into space aboard Vostok 1 in 1961.

This modified Soyuz is the first iteration in a spacecraft that includes many new upgrades, some of which include:

• upgraded thrusters (fully redundant)
• additional micrometeoroid debris shielding
• redundant electrical motors for the Soyuz’ docking probe
• increased power via additional photovoltaic cells on the Soyuz’ solar arrays
• new digital video transmitter/encoder to transfer video of the approach to ISS
• new relay telemetry capability
• upgraded Kurs automated rendezvous antenna
• improved satellite navigation system to better calculate the Soyuz’ position in space.

A photo posted by Bill Ingalls (@ingallsimages) on Jul 4, 2016 at 8:59am PDT

Usually when crews launch aboard Soyuz to the International Space Station, they take an accelerated trek to station via a 4 orbit/6-hour maneuver sequence. While fully redundant, due to the number of upgrades on this MS-01 ship, the Expedition 48 crew will be taking a longer 34-orbit / 2-day journey to the ISS.

The Expedition 48 crew includes:

• Soyuz Commander/Cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin of Roscosmos (center seat)
• Flight Engineer Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (left seat)
• Flight Engineer Kate Rubins of NASA (right seat)

While on this 2-day journey to Station, the crew will be testing many of the new Soyuz-MS upgrades. This testing and verification mission is the first of at least 2 that will be utilized to ensure the new upgrades are working nominally.

Launch is scheduled for July 7th, 2016 at 7:36 AM Baikonur time. Here are a few popular conversions below for launch time:

6:36 PM PDT (Los Angeles) [July 6th]

7:36 PM MT (Denver) [July 6th]

8:36 PM CDT (Chicago) [July 6th]

9:36 PM EDT (New York) [July 6th]

2:36 AM BST (London) [July 7th]

Here are a few more photos taken at rollout by NASA’s Head Contract Photographer, Bill Ingalls:

NASA Astronaut Kate Rubins:

Soyuz Service Platform Timelapse:

Follow Kate’s journey on Twitter for more

→@NASA_Astronauts on Twitter🚀

and find the current crew’s photography on social media:

NASA Astronaut Jeff Williams on Instagram🚀

Story via BLOGS.NASA.GOV

Photography by Bill Ingalls