A Soyuz rocket took off with three astronauts to the ISS

A Russian Soyuz rocket took off, Wednesday, Dec. 21, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, to the International Space Station (ISS) with three astronauts on board.Oleg Kononenko Russian, American Don Pettit and Dutchman Andre Kuipers flew to 13 h 16 GMT (14 h 16 in Paris) on board the Soyuz TMA-03M. The capsule was placed in orbit around the Earth a few minutes later, as expected. It should dock with the ISS on December 23 to 14 h 20, after two days of flight.Series of scientific experiments
The three men will join and on board the ISS and the Russians Anton Chklaperov Anatoli Ivanichine and American Dan Burbank, which had taken off from Baikonur on November 14.
During their mission about six months, the astronauts will receive the particular goods to be transported by three Russian Progress cargo ships, a cargo ship European ATV and two American vessels.
Dutch astronaut, doctor, is planning a series of scientific experiments from work done by European scholars, but also Canadian, Japanese and Americans. The Dutch will also experiment with a humanoid robot sent to the ISS by a Space Shuttle.
SOYUZ LAUNCH SECOND FROM THE SUMMER
The launch is the second Wednesday of the Soyuz spacecraft performed successfully for the loss of a Progress supply ship that crashed in Siberia in August. This failure had broken a reputation for reliability of the rocket, the strength of its nearly 1800 successful launches, and made the back of the largest Russian space industry in recent years.
Russia is now the only country capable of carrying astronauts to the ISS, since the disposal of this was the last U.S. space shuttle. The United States pays to Russia to transport their astronauts, at least $ 50 million headquarters. The commissioning of a U.S. spacecraft is not expected before 2015.