Soyuz lights up Baikonur with predawn liftoff

BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: March 27, 2014

The next three-man crew bound for the International Space Station lifted off Tuesday aboard a Soyuz rocket, giving spectators a fiery sky show as the 16-story launcher sped into space.

Launch occurred at 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 were inside the Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft for the launch.

Skvortsov was 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's docking with the space station, originally planned about six hours after liftoff, was delayed until Thursday after the Soyuz capsule ran into an orientation control problem during a rendezvous burn a few hours after launch.

Docking with the space station's Poisk module is now expected at 2358 GMT (7:58 p.m. EDT) Thursday.

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

Photo credit: Energia