(15 Jul 2012) SHOTLIST
Baikonur, Kazakhstan
1. Rocket on launch pad, UPSOUND (English - Countdown), supports fall away, motor powers up, rocket lifts off, camera follows ascent
Space
2. Crew, inside rocket (right) NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and (left) Russian cosmonaut Yury Malenchenko, with mascot doll
3. Rocket interior
Johnson Space Centre, Houston, Texas, USA
4. Pan of Mission control
STORYLINE:
A Russian Soyuz craft was launched into the skies over Kazakhstan on Sunday, carrying three astronauts to the international space station where they will quickly start preparing for a flurry of incoming traffic.
NASA astronaut Sunita "sunny" Williams, Russian cosmonaut Yury Malenchenko and Japan's Akihito Hoshide are set to travel two days before reaching their three colleagues already at the permanent space outpost about 250 miles (400 kilometres) above Earth.
Families and colleagues watched the launch from an observation platform in the Russian-leased cosmodrome in the dry southern steppes of Central Asia.
The Soyuz jettisoned three rocket booster stages as it was propelled into orbit, which takes just over nine minutes.
At that stage, a doll given to Malenchenko as a mascot by his daughter and suspended over the three astronauts floated out of view on television footage, indicating the craft had escaped the earth's gravitational pull.
Williams gave a thumbs-up sign and waved to onboard cameras as Russian space agency chief Vladimir Popovkin congratulated the crew over radio control.
Malenchenko, who is piloting the Soyuz, is one of Russia's most experienced astronauts and is making his fifth voyage into space.
Williams, who was born in Euclid, Ohio, and raised in Massachusetts, is on her second mission and will further extend the record for the longest spell in space for a female astronaut. She spent 195 days at the space station in 2006-2007.
Russians Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin and US astronaut Joseph Acaba have been working at the space station since mid-May.
The space station is being prepared for an unprecedented level of traffic. Japan's HTV3 cargo ship will dock with the space station next week, the first of nine craft making contact with the orbiting satellite over a 17-day span.
The Soyuz is scheduled to dock on Tuesday.
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