Soyuz TMA-19M commander Yuri Malenchenko of Roscosmos, along with flight engineers Tim Kopra of NASA and British astronaut Tim Peake of the European Space Agency (ESA) are set to launch to the International Space Station on Tuesday (Dec. 15) at 5:03 a.m. CST (1103 GMT or 5:03 p.m. local) from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Credit: NASA/Victor Zelentsov
They will dock their Soyuz to the space station's Rassvet module at 11:24 a.m. CST (1724 GMT) following a four-orbit rendezvous.
About two hours later, the hatches between Soyuz TMA-19M and the station will open and Malenchenko, Kopra and Peake will be greeted by ISS Expedition 46 commander Scott Kelly and flight engineers Mikhail Kornienko and Sergei Volkov. Kelly and Kornienko are within the last 100 days of an almost yearlong mission, having arrived at the orbiting laboratory last March.
Malenchenko, Kopra and Peake will stay on the space station through early June.
On Sunday (Dec. 13), the Soyuz-FG rocket topped with the TMA-19M spacecraft was rolled out to the launch pad by train and erected into position.