Soyuz on the pad to boost next space station crew

BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: March 23, 2014

Russian ground crews transferred a Soyuz rocket across the austere steppes of Kazakhstan on Sunday and hoisted the three-stage booster atop a concrete launch pad, marking a milestone in preparations to launch two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut Tuesday to the International Space Station.

Keeping with tradition dating back to the first manned space launch of Yuri Gagarin in 1961, the Soyuz launcher emerged from its assembly building on a specially-designed railroad car before sunrise Sunday.

The Soyuz rocket reached Launch Pad No. 1 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, and technicians rotated the rocket vertical before work platforms enclosed the launcher for final flight preparations.

Liftoff is scheduled for 2117 GMT (5:17 p.m. EDT) Tuesday, or 3:17 a.m. local time at Baikonur.

Veteran Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov, first-time flier Oleg Artemyev, and NASA astronaut Steve Swanson will climb inside the Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft about three hours before launch.

Skvortsov will be at the controls in the center seat of the spaceship as Soyuz commander, with Artemyev serving as the primary flight engineer in the left seat and Swanson in the capsule's right seat as the second flight engineer.

The trio will spend 170 days in space before returning to Earth. Landing is currently scheduled for Sept. 11.

The crew will join space station commander Koichi Wakata and flight engineers Rick Mastracchio and Mikhail Tyurin already aboard the outpost.

See our Mission Status Center for the latest news on the launch.

Photo credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky