Soyuz MS-29

Soyuz MS-29 lifts off from pad 31/6 at Baikonur on 14 July 2026 at 14:43 UTC, carrying three crew members for a six-month rotation aboard the Station. Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina fly in the commander and flight-engineer seats. NASA astronaut Anil Menon takes the right-hand seat under the long-running seat-swap arrangement between the two agencies. The three-hour rendezvous puts them at the Rassvet docking port the same evening.

The crew

Anna Kikina is on her second flight. Her first was the 2022 Crew-5 mission with SpaceX — the first Russian to fly aboard a Crew Dragon — and she returns now to the Station on the vehicle her country has been launching to it since the year 2000. The transition from a SpaceX capsule that docks autonomously to a Soyuz that requires hands-on piloting during the final approach is a distinctive experience, and one that only a handful of people have had.

Pyotr Dubrov flew the famously long Expedition 64/65/66, which ran 355 days in 2021–2022. That extended stay was not planned — it happened because Roscosmos needed to make room for a film crew on the Russian side and shuffled the rotation. Dubrov handled the extra six months with the steady pragmatism the cosmonaut corps is known for.

Anil Menon is on his first spaceflight. He is a physician — an emergency medicine doctor who served as the flight surgeon for SpaceX’s first crewed Dragon tests, including DM-2 in 2020. He was selected in NASA’s 2021 astronaut class. His medical background and his direct experience with Dragon operations from the ground side make him an unusual addition to a Soyuz crew.

The vehicle

Soyuz MS is the latest variant of a spacecraft family that traces its lineage back to the 1960s. The capsule has been continuously improved — digital avionics replaced the original analog systems, the Kurs-NA docking system is more precise than its predecessor, and the solar panels generate more power — but the basic three-module architecture (orbital module, descent module, service module) has remained essentially unchanged.

The spacecraft launches from Baikonur on a Soyuz 2.1a rocket, reaches orbit in about nine minutes, and follows either a two-orbit (three-hour) or a thirty-four-orbit (two-day) rendezvous profile to the Station. MS-29 is scheduled for the fast profile.

What happens next

The crew joins the existing Station crew for a six-month rotation. The Soyuz spacecraft remains docked for the duration, serving as the crew’s lifeboat — if an emergency required evacuation, these three would climb into MS-29, seal the hatch, and undock within minutes.