Following a successful early-morning launch Monday, April 19 (UTC), three Amateur Radio operators are on their way to the International Space Station (ISS) in a Russian Soyuz vehicle. ISS Expedition 9 crew members Gennady Padalka, RN3DT, and Mike Fincke, KE5AIT, accompanied by European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andre Kuipers, PI9ISS, of the Netherlands took off into space from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz is due to dock with the ISS just after 0500 UTC on Wednesday, April 21.
Padalka and Fincke will relieve Expedition 8 crew members Mike Foale, KB5UAC, and Sasha Kaleri, U8MIR. During his nine days aboard the space outpost, Kuipers will conduct a couple of Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) school group contacts and carry out scientific experiments under a commercial agreement between the ESA and Russia. He’ll return to Earth April 29 with Foale and Kaleri aboard the Soyuz vehicle now attached to the ISS. Foale and Kaleri have been on the space station since last October.
Padalka, 45, will serve as Expedition 9 commander and Soyuz commander, while Fincke, 36, will be the NASA ISS science officer and flight engineer. They have been training together as a space station crew for nearly two years. This marks Fincke’s first space flight and Padalka’s second. Padalka lived aboard the Russian Mir space station for 198 days in 1999.