Soyuz MS-22 is a Russian Soyuz spaceflight to the International Space Station with a three crew planned for launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome on 21 September 2022. The launch was previously planned for 13 September 2022. Still, in the provisional flight manifest prepared by Roscosmos by the end of Summer 2020, the launch of Soyuz MS-22 was delayed to 21 September 2022 for a 188 days mission.
However, continued international collaboration around the ISS has been thrown into doubt by the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and related sanctions on Russia.
The original three-Russian member crew was named in May 2021. American astronaut Francisco Rubio replaced Anna Kikina as part of the Soyuz-Dragon crew swap system of keeping at least one NASA astronaut and one Roscosmos cosmonaut on each crew rotation mission. This ensures both countries have a presence on the station and the ability to maintain their separate systems if either Soyuz or commercial crew vehicles are grounded for an extended period.
The Soyuz MS-22 crew:
Commander: Sergey Prokopyev, Roscosmos
Flight Engineer 1: Dmitry Petelin, Roscosmos
Flight Engineer 2: Francisco Rubio, NASA
The launch is scheduled for September 21, 9:54 a.m EDT. 13:54 UTC / 15:54 CEST from the Launch Pad 31/6 at Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
