Soyuz rocket installed on Baikonur's Gagarin launch pad
BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan. Dec 17 (Interfax-AVN) - A Soyuz-FG launch vehicle with a seventh digital manned spaceship has been installed at the Yuri Gagarin launch pad at Baikonur, an Interfax-AVN correspondent reports from the site.
"The transportation of the Soyuz-FG rocket and the Soyuz TMA-07M spaceship to the launch pad and their installation were normal," Federal Space Agency spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov said.
The 34/35th expedition to the International Space Station (ISS) will go on mission on Wednesday, December 19.
The gate of the assembly and testing hangar opened at 7:00 a.m. local time (5:00 a.m. Moscow time), and the rocket was delivered to the launch pad by rail within two hours under police protection.
The launch is scheduled for 4:12 p.m. Moscow time on December 19. Final tests will be run on the rocket and the spaceship and fueling will be done before that.
A state commission will approve the crew makeup on Tuesday. The prospective crew includes Roman Romanenko (Russia), Chris Hadfield (Canada) and Thomas Marshburn (the U.S.). Their backups are Fyodor Yurchikhin (Russia), Luca Parmitano (the ESA) and Karen Nyberg (NASA).