OREANDA-NEWS The launch of the Soyuz-MS-21 manned spacecraft, which will go to the ISS, will take place on March 18 at 18:55 (Moscow time). The flight will be carried out from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The crew of the ship will include Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov, according to the Telegram channel of Roscosmos.

Sergey Prokopyev, Anna Kikina and Dmitry Petenin are assigned to the backup crew. The astronauts will stay on the ISS for six months and during the period of their stay will go into outer space six to seven times.

Earlier it was reported that Roscosmos plans to actively begin to engage in space tourism. To do this, the output of Soyuz MS ships will be doubled. According to the head of the corporation Dmitry Rogozin, the first step towards promoting space tourism in the Russian Federation was the launch of a ship with Japanese tourists in 2021.

Earlier it was reported that the construction of the National Space Center continues in the west of Moscow on the territory of the State Space Research and Production Center named after M.V. Khrunichev. It is planned to put the center into operation in 2023, according to the portal of the mayor of the capital.