Photos: Delta 4’s foggy launch

NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and two Russian cosmonauts will ride a Soyuz ferry ship to the International Space Station early Friday, the first step in a record crew rotation requiring two launches and two landings with four different spacecraft in just three weeks.

The final flight of Russia’s Rockot launcher took off Thursday and placed four satellites into orbit nearly 1,000 miles above Earth, ending a run of 31 launches since May 2000.

The shift in launch date is to allow more time to build in redundancy to account for the helium leak. The launch is currently scheduled for no earlier than Saturday, May 25, at 3:09 p.m. EDT (1909 UTC).