Soyuz rocket bound for rendezvous with space station rolls out in Kazakhstan

Sep 4, 2015 The Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft was recently rolled out from its hangar in preparation for a mission to the International Space Station later this week. A vintage train hauled the enormous rocket across the runway at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The trip will feature the trio of Sergei Volkov of the Russian Federal Space Agency, Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency and Aidyn Aimbetov of the Kazakh Space Agency.

According to a press release by NASA, the Mission commander Volkov will be aboard the station for six months while his colleagues will only be aboard for eight days.

The release also stated that Volkov is due to return in March 2016 along with US flight engineer Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko. The duo are currently on a one year mission to collect biomedical data for a potential human journey to Mars.