Soyuz TMA-22 moved to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Expedition 28s crew launch on Sunday.

 The SP Korolev RSC Energia corporation has moved the Semyorka rocket with the Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft atop it, to the launch pad at Baikonur in Kazakhstan, in preparation for the next crew launch to the International Space Station. This launch will be the first one with a crew atop the same kind of upper stage that failed to put a Progress resupply spacecraft into orbit in August. Two months of intensive tests and investigation into the causes of the launch failure in August found the cause: a clogged fuel line that kept the upper stage from firing for the proper length of time to put the Progress spacecraft into obit. This problem has been corrected and the Semyorka rocket that will send the 3 man crew of Expedition 28s to the International Space Station on this coming Sunday was railed to the launch pad this morning, before dawn.

 By the light of a just after Full Moon, the Semyorka was pulled out if it’s assembly building, and backed down a rail spur by a locomotive. The rocket with spacecraft inside the payload shroud reached the pad without incident, and was erected from horizontal to vertical in a move done more than 1,800 times since mid 1957.

Expedition 28s, with Commander Dan Burbank , Flight Engineer Anton Shkaplerov, and Anatoly Inavishin, will launch at 8:14 PM Mountain Standard time Sunday night, which of course will be early Monday morning UT and in Kazakhstan. Early start for a workweek for Dan, Anton and Anatoly.

 Much more than a new crew for the International Space Station is at stake. IF this launch to the ISS fails for any reason, and I say IF, it is likely the crew aboard the station will place the station in a mode where it can be controlled from the ground, but little or no science will be done, and the station basically mothballed and on automatic pilot as it were, with no one aboard for who knows how long. So the success of ths flight to the International Space Station is critical to our presence in space, and if it fails, what it will say about our fragile daisy chain of access to our own space station, and those who got us into this precarious position will be obvious.

 I have included two views of the rollout to the pad of Soyuz TMA-22/Expedition 28’s Semyorka so everyone who reads this blog will get a sense of what’s at stake with this launch, as well as the time proven Russian Semyorka/Soyuz combination that has worked very well over many decades to sent people into space.