Live from Baikonur: New Crew To Launch

The 18th expedition to the International Space Station is scheduled to get under way at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan early Sunday with the planned launch of a fresh outpost crew and a millionaire space tourist.

Strapped into a capsule atop a venerable Soyuz rocket, American astronaut Michael Fincke, Russian cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov and video game-maker Richard Garriott -- the son of a U.S. astronaut -- are scheduled to blast off at 3:01 a.m. EDT. Sunday.

We'll be webcasting live NASA TV coverage of the launch beginning at 2 a.m. Sunday. Simply click the NASA TV box on the righthand side of the page to launch our NASA TV viewer and live coverage of the Soyuz TMA-13 blastoff.

Fincke is the commander of the 18th expedition to the station, a tour of duty that will be devoted primarily to preparing the station for resident crews of six -- double the size of expedition crews to date. It will be Fincke's second stint on the station. He lived and worked there for six months during 2004.

Veteran cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov will be making his first long-duration stay. He'll serve as the expedition's prime flight engineer and will be in command of the Soyuz on the two-day trip to the station.

Garriott, the son of former shuttle and Skylab astronaut Owen Garriott, is flying under a commercial contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency. He made millions creating video games and is paying a reported $30 million -- the majority of his net worth, he says -- for the 10-day round trip to the station. He'll return to Earth Oct. 23 with current station commander Sergei Volkov and flight engineer Oleg Kononenko.

The launch will put the Soyuz spacecraft on course for a docking at the station at 4:30 a.m. Tuesday. We'll be webcasting live coverage of the orbital link-up, too.

The arrival will mark the first time second-generation space travelers have journeyed together in orbit. Station skipper Volkov is the son of former cosmonaut Alexander Volkov.

The launch will take place from the historic Site 1 complex at Baikonur Cosmodrome. The complex is the site where the former Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite -- Sputnik -- in October 1957 and the first human space traveler -- Yuri Gagarin -- in April 1961. It is known as "Gagarinskiy Start" (Gagarin's pad) and has hosted my than 400 launches.

NOTE ON IMAGES: Click to enlarge and save the Associated Press images. Then click the enlarged image for an even bigger view. The top image shows a bottom-to-top view of the Soyuz TMA-13 rocket and spacecraft at Site 1; the second shows (from left to right) Garriott, Fincke and Lonchakov at a prelaunch press conference. The final shot shows the sun rising over the launch pad before the Soyuz rocket was hauled out to it on Friday.