100th Launch to the International Space Station

By Nancy Atkinson - June 15, 2010 at 2:34 PM UTC | Space Exploration

The Soyuz TMA-19 vehicle blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan today to bring three new crew members to the International Space Station. This was the 100th launch of missions in support of space station assembly, resupply and crew exchanges. The rocket lit up the early morning sky in Kazakhstan at 3:35 a.m. Wednesday local time, (5:35:19 p.m. EDT and 9:35 pm GMT on Tuesday). The Soyuz took eight and a half minutes to reach orbit, but it will take about 2 days to catch up to the ISS.

On board are Cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and NASA astronauts Douglas Wheelock and Shannon Walker will join Expedition 24 commander Alexander Skvortsov, Mikhail Kornienko and Tracy Caldwell Dyson, who launched to the station on another Soyuz on April 2. This will be the first time a long-duration station crew has included two women.

Walker has

a blog at the Houston Chronicle,

that she hopefully will be able to update frequently from space. She is married to fellow astronaut Andy Thomas. Walker is serving as the flight engineer on the Soyuz flight, one of the few NASA astronauts who have trained to be a co-pilot for the Soyuz.

Of interest today, space journalist Jim Oberg has a new article on MSNBC,

"How Risky is it to Rely on Russian Spaceflight."

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com