In another step toward making the International Space Station truly live up to its name, the first entirely-non US crew launched Wednesday morning aboard the Soyuz TMA-15 (see photo at right) from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Their arrival (scheduled for 8:30 Friday morning) will mark the beginning of the era of six-person crews, for which the Station was originally designed.
Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, European Space Agency astronaut Frank De Winne, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Bob Thirsk will join the current three-person crew of Commander Gennady Padalka (Russian Space Agency) and Flight Engineers Mike Barratt (NASA) and Koichi Wakata (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) (JAXA) to form the Expedition 20 crew. This will mark the first time that all five partner agencies are represented by astronauts on the Station at the same time.
The first components of the International Space Station launched more than 10 years ago, and the first crew to inhabit the station arrived in 2000. For more information on the ISS, see this page.