A busy week at the station. Just last night the space shuttle Discovery left it and a Soyuz spacecraft has already taken off with the two members of the 19th crew as well as a space tourist who already visited the station in 2005
19th crew commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Michael Barratt were launched today at 13:49 Israel time from Baikonur in Bazarstan aboard the Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft. The team will stay at the station for six months.
Less than ten minutes after the launch, the spacecraft arrived in orbit. The antennas and solar collectors were deployed soon after.
Together with Padalka and Barratt, there is also the space tourist Charles Simoni, who is the first space tourist to make the same journey for the second time. Simoni stayed at the station in April 2007, when he took off to it together with the members of the 15th crew. Simoni will return to Earth in about a week with the members of the 17th crew: Commander Mike Finke and flight engineer Yuri Lunchakov in the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft that was launched to the station on October 12, 2008.
The 19th team will be welcomed by the members of the 18th team, who were joined just this week by the Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata. Wakata arrived at the station aboard the space shuttle Discovery on mission STS-119 which was launched on March 15 and is expected to land on Saturday after leaving the station overnight to make room for the new crew. Watka, who will also stay on the station for about six months, will of course also join the 19th crew and towards the end - also the 20th crew, and will return to Earth on mission STS-127.
Padalka, a colonel in the Russian Air Force will command the 19th crew as well as the Soyuz. He served as the Ninth Team Commander in 2004. During Padalka's first stay on the International Space Station, he performed four spacewalks.
Barratt, who was on his first flight, served as a surgeon in the team that medically accompanied the first occupants of the space station and then, in July 1998, he transferred to the astronaut course.
