spacetoday.net: Soyuz launches on two-day mission to the ISS

Posted: Thu, Sep 3, 2015, 9:45 AM ET (1345 GMT)
Soyuz TMA-18M launch (NASA)

A Soyuz spacecraft carrying crewmembers from Russia, Denmark, and Kazakhstan launched early Wednesday on a two-day mission to the ISS. The Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft launched atop a Soyuz rocket at 12:37 am EDT (0437 GMT) Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The spacecraft is taking Russian cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, European astronaut Andreas Mogensen, and Kazakh cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetov to the station. While recent Soyuz missions have made the trip in six hours, this mission is taking a two-day transit because of the station's orbit at the time of launch. Aimbetov and Mogensen will return September 16 in the Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft along with current ISS crewmember Gennady Padalka; Volkov will stay on the station for a half-year.