Expedition 30 to Launch to the ISS Later Today

The Soyuz TMA-03M space capsule that will carry three astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) later today is now erected at its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan, and is ready to go. The spacecraft will deliver half of the Expedition 30 crew, and will launch at 8:16 a.m. EST (1316 GMT).

This segment of the flight will feature Oleg Kononenko, who is a cosmonaut for the Russian Federal Space Agency (RosCosmos), NASA astronauts Don Pettit, and Andre Kuipers, a Dutch astronaut flying for the European Space Agency (ESA), Space report.

They were originally scheduled to launch a lot earlier, but their flight was canceled due to the failure of the ill-fated Progress 44 unmanned space capsule in August. Since then, the Soyuz carrier rocket has undergone numerous tests ahead of this manned launch.

The three will reach orbit just in time to spend Christmas together with the three astronauts already waiting for them in space.