Soyuz Tma 06 Makes Orbit On Way To Iss For Busy Week Ahead Of Coming And Going

The Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft successfully boosted to space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying Kevin Ford of the U.S. and Russia's Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin of Russia. The trio will have a six month stay in low-earth orbit at the International Space Station.

On Thursday, October 25, 2012, the new trio will join Commander Suni Williams and Flight Engineers Aki Hoshide and Yuri Malenchenko who've been residing at the orbital laboratory since July 17, 2012. On Thursday (Nov. 1, 2012), Williams and Hoshide will venture outside the space station in a spacewalk to fix an ammonia leak in the orbiting laboratory's cooling system. The spacewalk will be covered live on NASA-TV.

On Sunday (Oct. 28, 2012), a robotic Dragon space capsule built by SpaceX will depart the space station to wrap up the debut cargo delivery flight and splash down in the Pacific Ocean. Days later, on Wednesday (Oct. 31, 2012), an unmanned Russian Progress spacecraft will launch and dock at the space station within six hours to deliver tons of more cargo.

Source: greys-area.blogspot.com