(L to R) Acaba, Padalka and Revin
Padalka, who is making his fourth space flight, is one of Russia's most experienced and decorated active cosmonauts who has already spent 585 days in space and made eight spacewalks. Acaba had previously made one shuttle flight while Revin is making his first trip into space.
The crystal clear blue skies from the Kazakh steppe provided launch watchers an outstanding ascent view has seen in the 11-minute video above. Russia is now the sole nation capable of transporting humans to the ISS after the retirement of the US shuttle fleet to museums.
The trio will berth early on Thursday, May 17, 2012 joining Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA's Don Pettit and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers aboard the ISS, a 100 billion research complex orbiting about 240 miles (385 km) above Earth.
The crew will immediately begin preparation for the arrival next week of privately owned SpaceX's Dragon Capsule. It will be the first time a private company has launched space station supplies. The FALCON 9 BOOSTER is expected to roar to life at pre-dawn time of 4:55 AM Saturday, May 19, 2012 at the Cape Canaveral, Florida launch pad.
Artist rendition of Dragon docking
The Dragon cargo spacecraft contains about 1,150 pounds of food, clothing and other low-priority items. The capsule then will be repacked with around 1,455 pounds of trash and no-longer-needed components and detached from the space station on May 31, 2012. From that point, SpaceX plans to guide the craft back to Earth for a parachute descent to a Pacific Ocean splashdown.
Malenchenko, Williams and Hoshide
Kononenko, Kuipers and Pettit are scheduled to return to Earth on July 1 aboard their Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft. At that point, Padalka, Revin and Acaba will make up the core members of the Expedition 32 crew with Padalka serving as commander. Three fresh crew members -- cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide -- will join the ISS Expedition-32 crew two days after launch July 15, 2012 aboard the SOYUZ TMA-05M spacecraft.
Credit: unexplored-earth.blogspot.com
