A Soyuz spacecraft lifted off from a launch site in Kazakhstan on Tuesday to ferry three new crew members to the International Space Station. The Russian vehicle is carrying the three space engineers -- an American, Joe Acaba; and two Russians, Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin -- from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, according to the NASA website quoted by CNN. Once at the space station, they will join three colleagues already on board: Commander Oleg Kononenko, a Russian; and two flight engineers, Andre Kuipers of the Netherlands and Don Pettit, an American. The six men form the space station's Expedition 31. The ISS is a joint venture between NASA, Russia's RKA space agency, Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency, the European Space Agency and the Canadian CSA.
