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A new crew to live and work aboard the International Space Station rocketed into orbit on Sunday, 12 October 2008, aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. U.S. astronaut E. Michael Fincke, Russian cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov and Richard Garriott, a U.S. computer game developer, lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 2:01 a.m. CDT.

Fincke, the only American to launch twice on a Soyuz, will serve as commander of the six-month Expedition 18 mission. The mission's main focus will be preparing the station to house six crew members on long-duration missions. The Expedition 18 crew is scheduled to arrive at the station Tuesday, with docking to the Zarya module scheduled for 3:33 a.m.

Expedition 17 Commander Sergey Volkov and spaceflight participant Garriott will become the first children of previous space fliers to greet each other in orbit. Garriott is the son of former NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, who was a member of the Skylab-3 crew in 1973. Volkov is the son of veteran cosmonaut Alexander Volkov, who flew three Soyuz missions.

Space tourist Garriott will spend nine days on the station under a ommercial agreement with the Russian Federal Space Agency. He will return to Earth on Oct. 23 with Volkov and Expedition 17 Flight Engineer Oleg Kononenko, who have worked aboard the station since April 10.

Photo: Garriott, Lonchakov & Fincke at Cosmonaut Hotel in Kazakhstan on 1 October 2008. Photo courtesy of NASA

For more information about the space station and how to view it from Earth, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station.

Source: NASA news release on 12 October 2008