WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

In the Integration Facility at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the upper stage of a Soyuz booster is raised back onto its test stand April 12 after the Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft was encapsulated in the rocket segment. The Soyuz rocket's three stages were then mated together on April 15 in advance of the launch of Expedition 51 crewmembers Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Jack Fischer of NASA April 20 on the Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft from Baikonur for a four and a half month mission on the International Space Station.