Astronaut crews board Soyuz, Discovery

The next crew of the International Space Station is onboard a Soyuz rocket as countdown clocks tick toward a 9:22 a.m. EDT launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome.

American astronaut Peggy Whitson, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor will be launching from the same pad where Yuri Gagarin blasted off in April 1961, becoming the first human to fly in space.

Half a world away at the Kennedy Space Center, NASA's next shuttle crew is strapping into Discovery at launch pad 39A for the final hours of a practice countdown for a planned Oct. 23 launch.

A half mile south, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket is poised to launch tonight on a mission to deploy an advanced military communications satellite. The launch window will open at 8:22 p.m. and extend through 9:23 p.m.

You can watch a live webcast of the Soyuz countdown and launch here in The Flame Trench. Simply click the link below the image above or under the NASA TV webcast box to the right to launch our NASA TV viewer.

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