Replacement crew on way to space station
By Stefano Coledan
Special to CNN
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(CNN) -- Three astronauts aboard a Soyuz spaceship have begun a hypersonic pursuit of the International Space Station.
The spaceship, launched at 0318 GMT Monday from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome, is expected to reach the station in two days.
A Russian cosmonaut and an American astronaut are scheduled spend the next six months on the orbital outpost.
Commander Gennady Padalka, 45, and flight engineer Edward "Mike" Fincke, 37, will replace two colleagues who have lived aboard the complex since October.
A third passenger aboard the Soyuz is Dutch flight engineer André Kuipers, 45.
He will remain on the station for nine days to perform a series of commercial experiments and return to Earth with the outgoing station crew. This is part of an agreement between the European and Russian space agencies.
Preparing to come home are NASA's Michael Foale and flight engineer Alexander Kaleri of the Russian space agency.
"We're 'go' for the crew exchange and 'go' to continue flying to the space station," said NASA program manager William Gerstenmaier.
The air aboard the station is good and there are enough supplies for the astronauts to carry out their mission, Gerstenmaier said.
Right after last year's Columbia disaster, the shuttle fleet was grounded. Since then, Soyuz spaceships have become the only means of transporting crews to and from the space station. Serving as a lifeboat, one craft must be docked to the international complex at all times, but given its orbital life span, it must be replaced every six months.
Without space shuttles regularly visiting the station, the delivery of supplies -- particularly water -- has become a major problem. The rocket carrying the Soyuz craft into space is seven times less powerful than the shuttle, and the capsule has less space for supplies.
The same type of rocket also launches the Progress space freighters that deliver provisions to the station, but that's still a far cry from the tons of cargo a space shuttle can haul. That has forced NASA and the Russian space agency to reduce the number of permanent residents on the station from three to two. This is the third crew to ride a Soyuz after the Columbia disaster.
"It's great that our Russian partners are here to help us during this time," Gerstenmaier said in Baikonur. "It would never have occurred without the tragedy of Columbia. So out of that tragedy has come a remarkable relationship between our two countries and our two space programs."
Despite Gerstenmaier's assurances about the station's safety, the complex is down to only one oxygen generator, which Foale and Kaleri repeatedly fixed. They also repaired a treadmill -- an essential exercising tool for astronauts to maintain muscle tone and bone density during long missions.
The Soyuz now on its way to the station is carrying spare pumps to repair another broken generator. That should help the station crew avoid using alternative back-up systems.
As Padalka put it, the task of his mission, called Expedition 9, is to keep the orbital complex running.
Problems with gyroscopes -- devices used to keep the station properly oriented in space -- also are cropping up. Spares could be sent to the station only via the shuttle, which means no earlier than a year from now.
Padalka and Fincke intend to perform several scientific experiments, some of which were started by previous crews. Overall, the new team might be able to devote a total of about 300 hours to science, NASA said.
|  Soyuz crew members Gennady Padalka, top, Michael Fincke, center, and Andre Kuipers wave before boarding their spacecraft Monday. |
Two space walks are scheduled in order to prepare the station for the arrival of European Space Agency cargo ships, which could start flying as early as next year. Part of the astronauts' tasks will be finishing the work started by Foale and Kaleri in late February, when they had to cut short their space walk due to an overheating spacesuit.
Of the three astronauts launched Monday, Padalka is the only one with previous space experience. He spent half a year aboard the space station Mir in 1998-99.
Padalka and Fincke are filling in for colleagues previously appointed to -- and then taken off -- this mission. Reassignments were dictated first by the Columbia disaster and more recently by medical problems affecting one NASA astronaut.
"Space has shown us over the past years that things aren't always what we expect, and that we need to be ready," said Fincke, referring to the fact he was picked for the mission just three months ago.
Fincke has supervised the construction of Russian space station parts, become fluent in the language and trained for several years and served as backup for several crews.
He received the surprising news when he already was making plans for another big event in his life: becoming a father for the second time. His wife is expecting a baby in June.
"We are all leaving our families behind so that we can serve our countries and serve our planet," he said. "I'll be missing my family very much, but they are in good hands and they will be waiting for me when I return."
Until Columbia's catastrophic re-entry last year, Soyuz launches were no longer carried live, even by NASA TV. In essence, these so-called taxi flights were an opportunity for Russian cosmonauts to get space experience flying and docking fresh lifeboats to the station and bringing the old ones back to Earth.
However in 2001, the Russian Space Agency made the third seat aboard its Soyuz craft available for trips by customers willing to pay up to $20 million a pop. The first space tourist was Californian millionaire Dennis Tito.
But if the cash-strapped Russian agency does not get badly needed funds, soon it might decide to keep astronauts in orbit for one year at a time. That would free up more seats during the biannual taxi flights.
Gerstenmaier said NASA is studying the option but would not elaborate on the stance the agency will take.
