Big Pic: Countdown To A Soyuz Rocket Launch
Shaunacy Ferro
at 05:45 AM May 29 2013
Soyuz Countdown
NASA/Bill Ingalls
Space // 

This pictorial tidbit from our friends at NASA shows a Soyuz rocket awaiting launch at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The plane in the front of the rocket is a wind vane.

Three astronauts from NASA, the European Space Agency and Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency, are scheduled to take off in the Soyuz rocket at approximately 4:30 p.m. Eastern time today. They're heading to the International Space Station, where they'll stay until mid-November.

One of the astronauts on board is Karen Nyberg, a NASA flight engineer, who has been touted by National Geographic as having the potential to fill the Twitter-sized hole in our hearts created by Commander Chris Hadfield's departure. (She's apparently great on Pinterest.)

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