Preparations for the next expedition to the International Space Station are in their final stage at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi and US astronaut Timothy J. Creamer are scheduled to blast off at 21:40 GMT on December 21. Early on Friday the Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft left its processing facility on a rail track and was taken to the launch pad where it was vertically set up.On Saturday morning Russian Orthodox priest blessed the rocket and Russian specialists responsible for the launch.The trio will launch off on board the TMA-17 to join the Expedition 22 crew after docking to the International Space Station on Tuesday, December 22. Noguchi, Kotov and Creamer will expand Expedition 22 to five crew members. Residing onboard the ISS since October 2 are Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineer Maxim Suraev. The three new arrivals will spend six months on the space complex making improvements to the station and conducting experiments. Japan will be following the launch closely, with Noguchi being the second Japanese astronaut to climb aboard a Soyuz capsule. We had training in Japan this summer and I was successful enough to train them to be a sushi lover, so both of my crew mates really like sushi. So, I will make a couple of different flavours of sushi. And this time actually JAXA has kind of a joint project with Antarctica, they have also great preservative food in Antarctica and they also have some, believe it or not, some sashimi and raw fish and sushi, so I brought some of those up to station to share with my crew, said Noguchi at a news conference. The backup crew comprises Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, US astronaut Douglas H. Wheelock, and Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa.
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