Article Posted on : - Dec 20, 2011

The Soyuz spacecraft at the launch pad. A NASA photo

WASHINGTON/BAIKONUR (BNS): Three astronauts are getting ready to fly to the International Space Station on board a Soyuz space capsule on Wednesday.

The Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft will launch NASA's Don Pettit, Russia's Oleg Kononenko and Europe's Andre Kuipers to the orbital laboratory from Kazakhstan.

The Russian-made craft will be launched by the Soyuz-FG carrier rocket which is scheduled to liftoff from the Baikonur cosmodrome at 1316 GMT Wednesday.

The spacecraft rolled out to the launch pad on Monday.

Soyuz is expected to dock with ISS's Rassvet module at 1520 GMT on Friday, NASA said.

The new crew members will join NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin, who have been aboard the orbital station since mid-November.