Soyuz crew climbs to orbit from darkened Kazakhstan. Photo Credit/NASA TV
American, Russian and European astronauts began a five month journey to the International Space Station on Wednesday, lifting off aboard a Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
NASA’s Catherine “Cady” Coleman, a 50-year-old chemical engineer and retired Air Force colonel; Dmitry Kondratyev, a 41-year-old Russian air force colonel; and the European Space Agency’s Paolo Nespoli, a 53-year-old Italian aerospace engineer, lifted off at 2:09 p.m., EST.
The trouble-free, nine minute climb to orbit marked the first in a series of maneuvers that will set up a docking with the space station on Friday just after 3 p.m., EST.
The newcomers will join the station’s Expedition 26 crew, NASA’s Scott Kelly and Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka, both of Russia.
The station’s usual population of six personnel dropped temporarily to three, as a pair of NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut descended to Earth on Nov. 25, ending a five month mission of their own.
“There is a lot on our plate,” said Kelly, the orbiting laboratory’s current commander.
Catherine Coleman, Dmitry Kondratyev, Paulo Nespoli, left to right, with their Soyuz spacecraft prior to launching. Photo credit/NASA
High atop the priority list for the newly constituted space station crew is 115 experiments involving nearly 400 researchers in disciplines as varied as the life sciences, physics, the environment and robotics. Seventy-two of the experiments represent U. S. sponsored investigations, 18 of them under the banner of the new U. S. National Laboratory Program. The National Lab facilities are open to university scientists, private companies and other federal agencies.
The station crew will also focus their efforts on fortifying the station with supplies, spare parts and other provisions ahead of the shuttle program’s retirement. Currently, the final missions of shuttle Discovery and Endeavour are scheduled for early February and April. Congress may fund an additional supply mission to the station in mid-2011 using Atlantis, marking the end of shuttle operations after three decades.
Current scheduling also includes the late January space station arrivals of Japan’s HTV 2 and Russia’s 41 Progress unmanned cargo capsules. ESA’s second unmanned ATV cargo ship, Johannes Kepler, is scheduled to arrive in late February.
Coleman, Kondratyev and Nespoli are due back on Earth in mid-May.