Expedition 36/37 Flight Engineer Karen Nyberg of NASA, left, Soyuz Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), centre, and Flight Engineer Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency, received a traditional blessing from an Orthodox priest before the crew members left the Cosmonaut Hotel on Tuesday, 28 May 2013, in Baikonur, Kazakhstan to suit up and launch on board a Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station. The crew's Soyuz rocket launched as scheduled at 2:31 a.m. on Wednesday 29 May, Kazakh time. Yurchikhin, Nyberg, and Parmitano, will remain on board the space station until mid-November.
<bdi><a href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q71171454" class="extiw" title="d:Q71171454"><span title="American photographer">Bill Ingalls</span></a>
</bdi>
Taken on 28 May 2013, 20:26:05
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/8867811740/">NASA (201305280004HQ)</a>