BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan. July 16 (Interfax-AVN) - The preparations for launch and takeoff of Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft proceeded according to plan, head of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) Vladimir Popovkin confirmed on Sunday.
"The most intensive and difficult part was carried out successfully. I talked to the crewmembers now, they feel well. The docking of the spacecraft with the station is scheduled for the 17th. I have no doubts about everything going property," he said after takeoff.
Earlier reports said that the Soyuz spaceship took off for ISS from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 6:40 a.m. on Sunday.
Soyuz TMA-05M is carrying the crew of Expedition 32/33 comprising Russian cosmonaut Yury Malenchenko, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide. They will remain in space for almost half a year and carry out some 40 scientific experiments.
The scientific program of the mission implies the Hurricane (Uragan) experiment will develop a ground-based system of monitoring and predicting the progression of natural and man-made disasters.
On August 21 Russian cosmonauts Malenchenko and Gennady Padalka during a seven-hour spacewalk are to install five additional antimeteorite panels to Zvezda service module and manually launch a micro satellite.
Malenchenko, aged 49, has four space flights on his record, while both Williams and Hoshide have only been into space once, each of them doing flights aboard U.S. shuttles. As a crewmember of Expedition 14 Williams set a record among women astronauts by making four spacewalks with a total duration of 29 hours and 17 minutes.
The automatic docking of the Soyuz with ISS is scheduled for 7:40 a.m. Moscow time on July 17.