The State Commission on Crewed Space Complexes Flight Testing presided over by Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin confirmed the prime and backup crews composition of the Soyuz MS-17 crewed spacecraft. At the same time, the Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket and the ground infrastructure was confirmed to be ready for the upcoming launch in accordance with the International Space Station program.

The Soyuz MS-17 crewed spacecraft prime crew includes Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, as well as NASA astronaut Kathleen Rubins. Their backups are Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov, as well as NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei.

Starting at 10:00 UTC, the crews will take part in an online prelaunch press conference available live. The Soyuz-2.1a rocket with the Soyuz MS-17 crewed spacecraft is scheduled to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on October 14, 2020 at 05:45 UTC. This flight will be the first to follow a two-orbit rendezvous scheme with the docking to Rassvet module planned at 08:52 UTC.