A new trio of Expedition 26 spaceflight engineers blasted off Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 2:09 p.m. EST (1:09 a.m. Thursday, Baikonur time). Dmitry Kondratyev, Catherine Coleman and Paolo Nespoli are onboard the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft and headed for a docking with the International Space Station.
They will dock to the station’s Rassvet mini-research module Friday afternoon. After hatch opening the crew will participate in a traditional greeting ceremony, talk to family and officials on the ground then be briefed on station safety procedures.
Soyuz TMA-20 lifts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying Expedition 26 Soyuz Commander Dmitry Kondratyev of Russia, NASA Flight Engineer Cady Coleman of the U.S. and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Paolo Nespoli to the International Space Station. Image Credit: NASA
The current station residents, Commander Scott Kelly and Flight Engineers Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka, have been living and working on the space station since Oct. 9. They are scheduled to end their stay in March when they land in Kazakhstan aboard the Soyuz TMA-01M vehicle.
The three new Expedition 26 crew members will officially become the Expedition 27 crew when Kelly, Kaleri and Skripochka undock and return home. Kondratyev, Coleman and Nespoli are scheduled to complete their stay in May.
Kondratyev, Coleman and Nespoli stayed at the Cosmonaut Hotel in Baikonur for two weeks undergoing final launch preparations. Before arriving in Baikonur they were in Star City completing training, participating in official ceremonies and conducting meetings with Russian space officials.
The next set of visitors to the orbiting laboratory will arrive at the station aboard space shuttle Discovery. The STS-133 crew will deliver and install a logistics carrier and a new storage module.
During his stay aboard the station, Kelly will post some of his photographs of Earth on Twitter for an online geography trivia game.
