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fork(2) [soylentnews.org] writes:

      Space.com [space.com] reports:

Three new crewmembers launched toward the International Space Station [space.com] in an upgraded Russian Soyuz spacecraft today (July 6), beginning a two-day journey to the orbiting lab.

      At 9:36 p.m. EDT (0136 on July 7 GMT), the trio -- NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Takuya Onishi -- successfully lifted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan atop a Russian Soyuz rocket.

      The three spaceflyers will spend their two-day trip [space.com] testing the Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft's modified systems before docking with the station early Saturday morning (July 9). [Russia's Manned Soyuz Space Capsule Explained (Infographic) [space.com]]

      [...]

        Rubins is a molecular biologist and former "virus hunter"; she worked with West and Central African viruses before being selected as a NASA astronaut in 2009. Onishi, who is a trained pilot, was selected as an astronaut candidate in 2009 as well (by JAXA), and he was a part of NEEMO 15 [space.com], a 2011 NASA research mission in which six "aquanauts" lived in an underwater lab testing new technologies for exploring an asteroid.

      Ivanishin flew in the Russian Air Force before his selection by the Russian space agency, known as Roscosmos, in 2003, and he served as flight engineer on the long-duration Expedition 29/30 space station missions in 2011. (His last launch from Baikonur was on a snow-filled winter day [space.com]).

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