Soyuz MS-28

Mission

The Soyuz MS-28 mission originally planned to use spacecraft number 759, but that vehicle suffered severe heat shield damage during factory testing in Korolyov. The shield either detached after its pyrotechnic bolts fired early, similar to the landing sequence, or its thermal layers came apart during a flawed test. Repairs could not finish before the late 2025 launch date. By October 2025, Roscosmos had not confirmed the incident, though photos from Baikonur showed vehicle number 753 being readied instead.

That spacecraft, along with number 752, had been set aside for commercial flights. Vehicle 752 flew the Soyuz MS-20 tourist mission, but after Russia invaded Ukraine, commercial deals with the Russian space program ended. So number 753 was reassigned to standard International Space Station work. The swap also let Roscosmos use the older craft before its onboard systems expired.

Work at Baikonur started in early October 2025, with checks on the Kurs docking system, vacuum chamber leak tests, and verification of propulsion, guidance, and communications. The Soyuz-2.1a rocket and its payload fairing arrived by train on 22 October 2025. The mission lifted off successfully on 27 November 2025 at 09:27:57 UTC, and the crew reached the station at 12:34 UTC. But the Site 31 launch pad suffered damage when the mobile service platform apparently fell into the flame trench.

This made Russia’s only working crewed launch site unusable for a time. The next planned launch from that pad, the Progress MS-33 cargo mission set for late December, slipped to 22 March 2026. Roscosmos said it was evaluating the situation, had spare parts, and expected quick repairs. The pad was fixed by 3 March 2026.

Crew

The mission was slated to be the first after termination of a NASA/Roscosmos barter agreement, and as of 2024 was scheduled to transport three Russian cosmonauts. However, negotiations to extend the seat exchange program led NASA to announce in April 2025 that Christopher Williams had been assigned to the crew as a flight engineer.