Video: Highlights of second Expedition 50 spacewalk

The three newest residents of the International Space Station sped into orbit Wednesday aboard a Soyuz launcher after liftoff into an overcast sky over the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. These photos show the crew putting on their spacesuits and their mid-afternoon launch.

NASA is gearing up for an intense few weeks of work aboard the International Space Station, staging three spacewalks, moving a docking port from one module to another to support commercial crew ferry ships and capturing an Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo ship carrying nearly 4 tons of equipment and supplies.

Astronauts Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins ventured outside the lab complex Friday for a long-awaited spacewalk to attach a new docking mechanism, the first of two that will be used by U.S. crew ferry ships being built by Boeing and SpaceX to carry astronauts to and from the outpost, ending NASA’s sole reliance on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.