New crew, space tourist headed to station

A fresh expedition crew and the world's fifth space tourist are cruising toward the International Space Station today after blasting off from a central Asian spaceport.

Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov took off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 1:31 p.m. EDT. On board with them: billionaire space buff Charles Simonyi.

The trio is scheduled to arrive at the outpost at 3:12 p.m. Monday. Live NASA TV coverage will be webcast here in The Flame Trench starting at 2:45 p.m. that day.

Yurchikhin, Kotov and Simonyi rocketed away from the same launch pad where Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin blasted off on the world's first human space flight on April 12, 1961. A flawless countdown led up to a late-night flight that started at 11:31 p.m. local time.

Powered by a cluster of liquid-fueled engines, the three-stage Soyuz rode a long pillar of flame as it climbed away from the desert spaceport, knifing through overcast skies on its way to the outpost.

You can read NASA astronaut Jeff Williams' first-hand account of his March 2006 Soyuz countdown, launch and flight here: The Soyuz Flight

Simonyi, the chief architect of Microsoft Word and Excel software, is making a $25 million round trip to the station under a commercial agreement with the Russian Federal Space Agency.

Simonyi will spend about 10 days on the station and then return to Earth April 20 with current outpost commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin, who are wrapping up six-month tours of duty on the station.

You can read our story on Simonyi here: CharlesInSpace

Yurchikhin and Kotov are setting sail on a half-year outpost expedition. They'll join NASA astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams, who was ferried up to the station aboard shuttle Discovery in December. Williams will return to Earth later this year.

NOTE ON IMAGES: Click to enlarge the Associated Press photos of the Soyuz launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The first is an image of the Soyuz-U rocket with its first stage engines firing just before liftoff. The second shows the Soyuz poking through overcast skies on its way to the International Space Station.