Story highlights
The Russia spacecraft will dock on Wednesday
The crew already on board the International Space Station will return next week
A Russian rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, with a crew of three bound for the International Space Station.
The Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft carrying Flight Engineers Dan Burbank, Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin took off at 11:14 a.m. Baikonur time Monday (11:14 p.m. ET Sunday).
The mission is Burbank’s third visit to the space station, but the first for Shkaplerov and Ivanishin.
The trio will join their crewmates – Cmdr. Mike Fossum and Flight Engineers Satoshi Furukawa and Sergei Volkov – when their spacecraft docks with the space station Wednesday.
Fossum, Furukawa and Volkov are scheduled to undock from the space station on November 21 and land in Kazakstan a day later.
The launch comes less than two weeks after an unmanned freighter docked with the station with three tons of food, fuel, water and spare parts.
