A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying an astronaut, cosmonaut and circus entrepreneur is nearing a 4:37 a.m. EDT Friday docking with the International Space Station.
Watch it live in the NASA TV viewer above starting at 4 a.m.
Arriving at the station will be American Jeff Williams, Russian Maxim Suraev and Canadian Guy Laliberte, the founder of Cirque du Soleil, who launched Wednesday morning from the Baikonur Cosmodrome is Kazakhstan.
Williams and Suraev will become flight engineers on the station's Expedition 21 crew, while Laliberte will return to Earth after a nine-day stay. He'll be joined on the trip back by Russian Gennady Padalka, commander of the current Expedition 20, and American flight engineer Michael Barratt.
With Padalka's departure, Belgian Frank De Winne will take over the reins as the Expedition 21 commander - the first European astronaut to lead a station crew.
The outpost orbiting 220 miles above Earth will house nine people during the nine-day handover. The record is 13.
The other crew members already on board with De Winne, Barratt and Padalka are American Nicole Stott, Canadian Bob Thirsk and Russian Roman Romanenko.
Space news and analysis from Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral 
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