See Soyuz Rocket's Derrière in this Awesome Photo

Engineers with the Russian Federal Space Agency (RosCosmos) moved the Soyuz rocket carrying the Soyuz TMA-03M space capsule to its launch pad today, in anticipation of a Wednesday, December 21, launch. This will also mark the last Soyuz flight for 2011.

Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, who will be the Commander of Expedition 30 on the International Space Station, will be accompanied aboard by NASA flight engineer Don Pettit, and flight engineer Andres Kuipers, of the European Space Agency.

They are scheduled to launch at 8:16 am EST (1316 GMT), and will make up the second part of Expedition 30, and the first part of Expedition 30. Kononenko will take command of the ISS when NASA astronaut Dan Burbank returns home, in March 2012.

The mission will take off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in the steppes of Kazakhstan.