A new multinational crew is en route to the International Space Station today after a night-owl launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.Strapped into a Soyuz spacecraft atop a Soyuz booster, Russian cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev, U.S. astronaut Catherine Coleman and the European Space Agency's Paolo Nespoli of Italy set sail at 2:09 p.m., or 1:09 a.m. Thursday local time. The launch was precisely timed to put the crew on course for a docking at the outpost Friday.
"As Yuri Gagarin said, 'Let's go!" Nespoli told mission managers before heading off to Site No. 1, the same pad where Gagarin launched on the first human spaceflight on April 12, 1961.The 150-foot-tall Soyuz blazed a fiery trail through cold, overcast skies as it climbed away from the central Asian spaceport and thundered toward orbit. The spacecraft reached orbit nine minutes after launch and its communications antenna and solar arrays deployed shortly thereafter.
Crewmates onboard the International Space Station watched the launch live on NASA TV. They include U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka.
The Soyuz is due to dock at the station at 3:12 p.m. Friday. You can watch live coverage of docking here in The Flame Trench starting 2:30 p.m. Friday.
Check out the Expedition 25/Expedition 26 Press Kit
No comments:
Post a Comment