The 21st crew, and a space tourist who is also a clown took off on his way to the space station

Flight engineers Geoffrey Williams and Maxim Surayev from the International Space Station's 21st crew were launched in their Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft from the Baikonur Space Center this morning at 09:14 Israel time and began a six-month stay in space

Flight engineers Jeffrey Williams and Maxim Surayev from the 21st crew of the International Space Station were launched in their Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft from the Baikonur Space Center this morning at 09:14 Israel time and began a six-month stay in space.

Less than ten minutes after launch, the Soyuz reached Earth orbit and its antennas, as well as the solar collectors, opened shortly thereafter. The spacecraft should arrive at the station in about two days.

Together with Williams - a colonel in the US Army and Soreyev - a colonel in the Russian Air Force, Guy Lilbert, a space tourist who was flown in an agreement between the company Space Adventures and the Russian Federal Space Agency, also took off. Lilbert, a professional clown, will return to Earth along with two members of the station's 20th crew - Gandy Padalaka and Michael Barrett, who will return to Earth in the Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft on October 10. The two were launched to the station on March 26.

With the departure of the two, Nicole Scott, Roman Romanenko, Robert Thirsk and Frank DeVine will remain at the station, who will take command of the 21st team with the departure of Padalka and Barrett. De Wien will be the first ESA astronaut to become commander of the International Space Station. So far, Americans and Russians have shared the role.

For Williams, 51, this will be the third trip to the space station. The first was on the space shuttle mission STS-101 in May 2000, and in 2006 he served six months as the station's 13th crew member. He has 193 days of space flight and over 19 hours of spacewalks behind him.

Soreyev, 37, is making his first flight into space, having served as backup for the 16th and 19th crews and now finally taking off himself.

Laliberta, the eighth space tourist, who paid Space Adventures $35 million for this privilege, is a Canadian billionaire who made his fortune from the circus business, where he started as a clown. He founded the "Circus de Soleil" (Circus of the Sun), and went up to Soyuz wearing a clown's red nose and also promised to tickle the other astronauts.