The gantry arms close around the Soyuz spacecraft to secure the rocket at the launch pad on Wednesday. (credit: NASA)
A Russian rocket will launch two cosmonauts, Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka, and NASA astronaut Jeff Williams into space today from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Liftoff is set for 5:25pm ET, and live NASA TV coverage of the launch begins at 4:30pm in the video below.
Williams will be making his third visit to the International Space Station, and he'll become the first astronaut to make three rotations through the orbiting laboratory as a crew member. He has previously lived on the station in 2006 and 2009. This has given Williams a cumulative time in space of 362 days.
He presently ranks sixth among NASA astronauts in cumulative time in space and 35th among all space fliers on a list mostly populated by Russian astronauts. Before the end of his present mission (after 158 days specifically), Williams will surpass Scott Kelly for the US record for total time in space (520 days). At the scheduled end of his third station mission in September, Williams will have spent 534 days in space.
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