Mission Reports

A veteran Russian cosmonaut, a rookie French flight engineer and a record-setting NASA astronaut making her third trip to the International Space Station are gearing up for launch Thursday aboard an upgraded Soyuz ferry craft, kicking off a two-day flight to the orbital laboratory.

The Soyuz booster that will send the International Space Station’s next three residents into orbit later this week rolled out of an integration hangar early Monday and rode a railroad car to its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.