AOL by Irene Klotz 7/28/2017
A trio of astronauts from the United States, Russia and Italy headed for the International Space Station on Friday, a step toward boosting U.S. research projects aboard the orbiting laboratory.
The Russian Soyuz rocket carrying the three spaceflight veterans blasted off at 11:41 a.m. EDT/1541 GMT from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, a NASA TV broadcast showed.
Randy Bresnik, with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Sergey Ryazanskiy, with the Russian space agency Roscosmos; and Italy's Paolo Nespoli, with the European Space Agency, were slated to reach the station at 6 p.m. EDT/2200 GMT.
The men will join three crew members already aboard the station, a $100 billion lab that flies about 250 miles above Earth.
Their arrival will mean NASA for the first time has four crew members instead of three available for medical experiments, technology demonstrations and other research aboard the station, the U.S. space agency said.
The extra astronaut will effectively double the amount of time for research, program manager Kirk Shireman said at a station conference last week.
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