Soyuz launcher ready for flight

Soyuz launcher ready for flight at Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on the morning of 21 December 2011.

André Kuipers is scheduled to be launched atop this rocket in the Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft as a flight engineer for Expeditions 30 and 31. Travelling together with Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and NASA astronaut Don Pettit, they will remain in space for nearly five months as part of the international crew of six on the ISS.