Russia's Roscosmos to Launch First Belarusian Woman Into Space on Thursday

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russian space agency Roscosmos will launch a Soyuz spaceship with an international crew of three on Thursday that will include the first female spacefarer from Belarus in the European country's post-Soviet history.
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Marina Vasilevskaya, a Belarusian flight attendant, will be joined by Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky and NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson on a more than three hour flight to the International Space Station.
The Soyuz MS-25 craft will blast off from Baikonur spaceport at 4:21 pm Moscow time (13:21 GMT) and is slated to dock with the orbital outpost at 7:40 pm Moscow time.
Novitsky and Vasilevskaya will stay at the space station for 12 days and return home on the Soyuz MS 24 craft together with NASA's Loral O'Hara, while Dyson is scheduled to spend more than six months in space and fly back with Roscosmos' Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub in September.