Russia continues to launch Soyuz spacecraft

The Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) on December 19 transferred the Soyuz spacecraft to the launch pad at Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, in preparation for the mission of bringing three astronauts to the Space Station. International (ISS), according to AFP.

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The Soyuz TMA-03M will leave the launch pad on this December 21, bringing three pilots including Donald Pettit (NASA's Aeronautics and Space Agency - NASA), Oleg Kononenko (Roscosmos) and Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers. (European Space Agency - ESA) worked about 5 months in orbit.

All three in the ISS will be joined by three astronauts Anton Shkaplerov, Anatoly Ivanishin (the same Russian) and Dan Burbank (US) to become the 30th ISS international fleet with 50-year-old Burbank astronaut chief .

Three astronauts Shkaplerov, Ivanishin and Burbank were picked up by Soyuz TMA-22 on November 16, and will return to Earth in March 2012.

Meanwhile, the three Soyuz TMA-03M astronauts are expected to return home in May 2012 after about 5 months on ISS.

Below is a picture of Soyuz in the launch pad (Photo: AFP):