14 DAY TRIAL // Three astronauts blasted off to the International Space Station yesterday, aboard the Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft. The vehicle took off at 0240 GMT on July 15, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, a facility operated by the Russian Federal Space Agency (RosCosmos) in Kazakhstan.
The mission crew is made up of Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko, NASA flight engineer Sunita Williams and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) flight engineer Akihiko Hoshide.
Waiting for them in orbit are Expedition 32 Commander Gennady Padalka (RosCosmos), NASA astronaut Joseph M. Acaba and RosCosmos flight engineer Sergei Revin, who launched towards the ISS on the Soyuz TMA-04M capsule, on May 15, 2012.
The newly launched crew is expected to reach the orbital lab at 12:52 am EDT (0452 GMT), On Tuesday, July 17. The spacecraft will dock to the Russian-built Rassvet module on the ISS.
The second leg of Expedition 32 is scheduled to remain aboard the station for about 4 months. “Unfortunately our mission is only four months – I wish it would be years and years and years,” Williams said in an interview before the flight.
“I'm really lucky to be flying with Yuri and Aki. I think we're going to have a great time,” the NASA astronaut went on to say. She also flew to space aboard the space shuttles Discovery (STS-116) and Atlantis (STS-117), and was a part of the ISS Expedition 14 and 15 crews.
She will also replace Acaba as the Commander of Expedition 32, once the latter returns to Earth in a couple of months. Williams will be only the second female ISS commander since the program began.
An interesting aspect of the new mission is that it coincides with the 37th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz test project, which was the world's first international space mission. It also marked one of the first instances of cooperation between NASA and RosCosmos.
In the decades since, the two nations worked with partners in Europe and Canada to build up the $100 billion International Space Station (ISS). The effort took more than a decade to complete.
“I'm not good at bossing people around – but my husband might say that's not so true. If I say we're going to do this, they all jump on it. Everybody's also felt free to offer their two cents. I think it's going to be really, honestly, pretty easy, and part of that is communication,” she explains, quoted by Space.
“I'm not a very good cook, but fortunately we have a couple of Japanese foods that I'm bringing up, so I'd like to share that with my fellow crewmates during my stay. Just sharing stories, talking to each other provides a great base of international cooperation,” Hoshide said before the flight.