Expedition 30 Soyuz Commander Oleg Kononenko, NASA Flight Engineer Don Pettit and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Andre Kuipers launched on the Russian Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft on December 21, 2011 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to begin a two-day journey to the International Space Station today at 13:16 UTC.
The trio will dock to the station on December 23 to start a five month tour on the complex, joining station Commander Dan Burbank of NASA and Russian Flight Engineers Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin, who have been on the outpost for just over a month.
