The International Space Station is on the verge of paying scientific dividends The International Space Station is on the verge of paying scientific dividends, U.S. astronaut Kevin Ford said before Tuesday\'s liftoff to the space laboratory. \"We\'re going to learn the bulk of everything we know about the science that we\'re doing up there in the next decade,\" Ford, 52, said at a news conference hours before he and two Russian cosmonauts were to lift off in the Soyuz TMA-06M from the central Asian desert spaceport Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the world\'s first and largest operational space-launch facility.
The scheduled 4:51 p.m. (6:51 a.m. EDT) launch from was to take Ford and cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky, 41, and Evgeny Tarelkin, 37, on a two-day trip to the space station, arriving Thursday.
They are to join NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko aboard the orbiting lab. Williams, Malenchenko and Hoshide and to return to Earth Nov. 19. They have been on the station since July.
\"For me, this is a very new adventure, launching from Russia and launching aboard a Soyuz. The Soyuz is an amazing spacecraft,\" said Ford, who flew to the space station in 2009 in the NASA space shuttle Discovery, the first operational shuttle to be retired, followed by Endeavour and Atlantis.
The U.S.-Russian Soyuz crew members are to begin a five-month mission conducting experiments in biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology and other fields as part of the space station\'s Expedition 33 and 34 crews.
It is the second spaceflight for Ford, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel originally from Portland, Ind., and the first for Novitsky, from Belarus, and Tarelkin, from Russia. Novitsky was to command the Soyuz trip to the space station.
\"It\'s going to be a wonderful experience to see [Novitsky and Tarelkin] in orbit for the first time,\" Ford said.
The $100 billion space station has been continuously staffed by rotating astronaut and cosmonaut crews since 2000, when the crew of Expedition 1, the first long-duration stay, first took up residency.
The lab is a joint project among the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Japan, Europe and Canada. It orbits at an altitude of 205 miles to 255 miles above Earth and completes 15.7 orbits of Earth each day.
It is funded until 2020 and may operate until 2028, the five space agencies have said.