Soyuz TMA-09M commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos, Expedition 36/37 flight engineer Karen Nyberg of NASA, and flight engineer Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency (ESA) are set to launch to the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday (May 28) at 3:31 p.m. CDT (2031 GMT; 2:31 a.m. local time May 29), from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
They will dock their Soyuz to the Earth-facing port of the station's Rassvet module at 9:17 p.m. CDT (0217 GMT May 29) following an expedited four-orbit rendezvous.
About two hours later, the hatches between Soyuz TMA-09M and station will open and Yurchikhin Nyberg and Parmitano will be greeted by ISS Expedition 36 commander Pavel Vinogradov, flight engineer Alexander Misurkin of Roscosmos and flight engineer Chris Cassidy of NASA, who have been on board the orbiting laboratory since late March.
Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano will stay on the station until mid-November. Cassidy, Vinogradov and Misurkin will return to Earth in mid-September, leaving Yurchikhin as Expedition 37 commander.
On Sunday (May 26), the Soyuz-FG rocket topped with the Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft was rolled out to the launch pad by train and erected into position.