Soyuz-FG carrier rocket with the spacecraft

The Soyuz-FG carrier rocket with the spacecraft piloted Soyuz TMA-20 successfully took off today from the Baikonur Cosmodrome (Kazakhstan) at 22:09 Moscow time (1:09 local time).

In the Soyuz is directed to the International Space Station (ISS) crew number 26/27 of the shipments prolonged orbital platform consisting of the ship's commander, cosmonaut of the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos Dmitri Kondratiev and engineers on board, NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman and ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli.

Final preparations for the flight began six hours before takeoff. The astronauts left the hotel 'Cosmonaut' at 16:00 Moscow time (19:00 local time). Within an hour the crew arrived at the 'Site 254' of the cosmodrome, where in the hangar assembly and testing space suits were made and tested its pressurization.

At 19:08 Moscow time (22:08 local time) the crew reported to the State Commission headed by Roscosmos chief Anatoly Perminov was ready for flight, after addressing the launch pad number 1 ( the famous 'Gagarin output'). Two hours before launch astronauts took their seats on the Soyuz TMA 20.

The expedition crew number 26/27 will last about six months. Dmitri Kondratiev For this is the first space mission of his life. Paolo Nespoli and made a cosmic journey as an expert in flying the shuttle Discovery as part of the ISS program in fall 2007. Catherine Coleman previously participated in two flights of the shuttle Columbia in the fall of 1995 in a mission of Spacelab and summer of 1999 for the deployment of space observatory Chandra X-ray Telescope.

The coupling of the spaceship with the ISS is scheduled for December 17 at 23:12 Moscow time, in automatic mode.