ROSCOSMOS - Soyuz TMA-03M Mission patch.
12/21/2011
Soyuz TMA-03M on a launch pad
December 21 at 17.16.15 GMT on a launch pad site Baikonur was put space rocket (ILV) Soyuz-FG with transport manned spacecraft (TLC) Soyuz TMA-03M (Commander Oleg Kononenko (Roscosmos), flight engineers Andre Kuipers (ESA) and Donald Pettit (NASA)).
Image above: The crew headed for the elevator, commander Oleg Kononenko, flight engineers, astronauts ship Andre Kuipers (ESA) and Donald Pettit (NASA) will take their places in the ship.
Soyuz TMA-03M Launch
After 528 seconds of flight rocket TPK Soyuz TMA-03M cleanly separated from the third stage to orbit an artificial satellite.
Soyuz TMA manned transport spacecraft cutaway
Docking of the Soyuz TMA-03M to the International Space Station is scheduled for December 23 this year at 19:22 Moscow time (10:22 a.m. EST on Friday).
Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineers Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin will welcome their new crewmates aboard the station a little while later when they open the hatches about 1 p.m.
Pettit, Kononenko and Kuipers are scheduled to live and work aboard the orbiting laboratory until May. They will become members of the Expedition 31 crew under the command of Kononenko when Burbank, Shkaplerov and Ivanishin undock in their Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft in March.
Read more about Expedition 30: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition30/index.html
Send a holiday postcard to the station crew: http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/postcard/
More information about the International Space Station (ISS), visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
Original text in Russian: http://www.federalspace.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=18481
Images, Video, Text, Credits: Press Service of the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos PAO) / Roscosmos TV / NASA / NASA TV / Translation: Orbiter.ch.
Greetings, Orbiter.ch
