Russia is launching a cargo ship to the International Space Station today. Watch it live!

A Soyuz rocket stands ready to launch the Progress 75 cargo resupply ship to the International Space Station.
A Soyuz rocket stands ready to launch the Progress 75 cargo resupply ship to the International Space Station. (Image credit: RSC Energia)

Russia will launch a cargo resupply spacecraft to the International Space Station today (April 24), and you can watch the launch and docking live online.

The uncrewed Progress 75 cargo resupply ship will lift off on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan tonight at 9:51 p.m. EDT (0151 GMT on April 25). It is scheduled to arrive at the orbiting laboratory on Saturday (April 25) at 1:12 a.m. EDT (0512 GMT), about three hours after liftoff. 

NASA TV will provide live coverage of the launch beginning at 9:30 p.m. EDT (0130 GMT); live coverage of the spacecraft's arrival at the International Space Station will begin on Saturday at 12:30 a.m. EDT (0430 GMT). You can watch it live on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV, or directly through the agency's livestream.

Related: How Russia's Progress spaceships work (infographic)

Loaded inside the cargo vessel are nearly three tons of food, fuel and supplies for the three-person crew of Expedition 63, which includes NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

The spacecraft will spend about seven months docked with the orbiting laboratory. It is scheduled to depart in December, when it will burn up in Earth's atmosphere. 

There are currently two additional cargo resupply ships docked with the station. A Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft, called NG-13, arrived at the station in February and is scheduled to depart in mid-May. Russia's Progress 74 spacecraft, which launched in December, will remain docked at the station until July. 

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

 

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Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

  • Postman1
    A great launch. My first time to see a Russian launch and it was better than I had even hoped for. Thank y'all for airing it!
    Reply