A Soyuz spacecraft took off yesterday (27) evening from Baikonur, with an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts on board, to the International Space Station (ISS, its acronym in English) – informed the Russian Mission Control. The Soyuz-TMA16M took off as planned at 22h42 (16h42 GMT), the cosmodrome located in Kazakhstan.
“The flight is normal,” said Control, a few minutes after the release, adding that two of the astronauts will in space on a mission record of a year. The ship should dock with the ISS at 4:36 a.m. Saturday (22h36, GMT).
The engineer of the American Space Agency (NASA, its acronym in English), Scott Kelly and Russian Mikhail Kornienko will 342 days on the ISS. The third crew member, Russian Gennady Padalka, will be in space for the usual period of six months.
Kelly, 51, and Kornienko, 54, will make a special mission to test the effects of flights space on the human body for long periods. They are on the ISS, currently the Russian Anton Shkaplerov, the Italian Samantha Cristoforetti and American Terry Virts. The trio must return to Earth in May.
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