Soyuz Tma 22 Crew Now In Earth Orbit

A Soyuz rocket successfully launched a spacecraft carrying three new ISS crewmembers early Monday. The Soyuz rocket lifted off from a snowy Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 11:14 pm EST Sunday (0414 GMT, 10:14 am local time Monday) and placed the Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft into orbit. On board the spacecraft is American astronaut Dan Burbank and Russia cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin.

The Soyuz is slated to dock with the ISS at 11:33 pm EST Tuesday (0433 GMT Wednesday). The launch had originally been scheduled for September, but was postponed after a failure of a similar Soyuz rocket carrying a Progress cargo spacecraft in August. The three new ISS crewmembers will briefly share the station with the current crew of Mike Fossum, Satoshi Furukawa, and Sergei Volkov, who will return to Earth next week. More from NASA.

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