Every space mission to the International Space Station starts with a train ride. The Soyuz TMA-18M that will take ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen, cosmonaut commander Sergei Volkov and Kazakh cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetov to space 2 September at 4:37 GMT was rolled out to the launchpad 31 August 2015.

It is a short distance from the final assembly building to the launchpad, but the train rides slowly. Later the Soyuz rocket and spacecraft are erected ready for launch.Their Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft will reach 28 800 km/h in less than an hour. Within 10 minutes of rising from the pad, the trio will have travelled over 1640 km and gained 210 km altitude. Every second for nine minutes, their spacecraft will have accelerated 50 km/h on average.

Andreas is heading for the International Space Station on a 10-day mission to test technology, new ways of running space missions and swap a spacecraft.