14 DAY TRIAL // The ISS is getting three new tenants this week, NASA's Kevin Ford and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin are getting ready for their first mission on the space station. For the two Russians, it will be the first time they go to space too.
The Soyuz spacecraft that will carry them to low Earth orbit is being erected in Baikonur, home of the Kazakhstan cosmodrome used by Russians for rocket launches.
The launch is planned for tomorrow from launch pad 31, not the one regularly used, Site No. 1 also known as Gagarin's Start, which is undergoing modernizations.
The Russian rocket that will carry the Soyuz spacecraft is now set into place ready for launch. The Soyuz TMA-06M mission will carry the three astronauts that will be part of the current Expedition 33 aboard the ISS.
They will join NASA's Sunita Williams, Yuri Malenchenko from, the Russian Federal Space Agency, or Roscosmos, and JAXA's, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Akihiko Hoshide.
The three astronauts launching this week will stay aboard the ISS for the first half of Expedition 34 as well.
