The Soyuz TMA-19 performed a flawless 'nominal' launch into the cloudless predawn desert skies from the the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan enabling viewers to watch the spacecraft booster separation as it continued into low earth orbit. The spacecraft and the crew of three, one Russian and two Americans, will dock with the International Space Station late Thursday afternoon with the crew spending nearly six months on-orbit. The launch marked the 100th space launch in support of the International Space Station since 1998.
While several women have flown to the ISS, this will be the first time a long-duration station crew has included two women with four men on-board. Both women are American - space rookie Shannon Walker, who launched today, and Tracy Caldwell Dyson who arrived on-orbit April 2, 2010.
Space journalist James Oberg has an interesting MSNBC article on this flight impressing the mind that the Star City will soon be a NASA astronaut's only path way to orbital space in the near-term.
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