MOSCOW, April 9. /TASS/. Russia’s Soyuz MS-16 manned spacecraft with three crewmembers docked to the Poisk module of the International Space Station (ISS) in the automatic mode, the State Space Corporation Roscosmos announced in its live broadcast on Thursday.

The spacecraft delivered the members of a new long-term expedition to the orbital outpost: Roscosmos cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy.

The Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft travelled to the International Space Station under a six-hour scheme, making four orbits around Earth. Now the crew of the orbital outpost will check the air tightness of the docking, after which pressure will be equalized between the manned spacecraft and the ISS. After that, Ivanishin, Vagner and Cassidy will be able to transfer to the space station.

Cosmonaut Ivanishin earlier said that the International Space Station would be the safest place during the coronavirus pandemic on the Earth.

The Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket lifted off from Site No. 31 of the Baikonur cosmodrome (the Vostok launch facility) at 11:05 a.m. Moscow time. The new crew will stay for 196 days aboard the International Space Station. Overall, the new expedition members are set to carry out over 50 scientific researches and experiments. Three researches out of that number will be conducted in the automatic mode without the crew’s participation. The cosmonauts and astronauts will also be handling space freighters during their stay aboard the orbital outpost.

The Soyuz MS-16 became the first manned spacecraft, which traveled to the orbital outpost atop the Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket with the fully Russian control system. Before that, all manned launches were carried by Soyuz-FG rockets with the Ukrainian control system.