U.S.-Russian crew blasts off to space station

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan -- Two U.S. astronauts and a Russian crewmate blasted off Wednesday on a mission to the international space station that will see the last-ever shuttle visit to the orbiting lab.

U.S. astronauts Douglas Wheelock and Shannon Walker and Russia's Fyodor Yurchikhin lifted off in a Russian Soyuz rocket, its boosters lighting up the the starry nighttime sky over Central Asian steppe. Their Soyuz TMA-19 spacecraft is set to reach the station Friday.

The trio will be onboard the space station to see the final shuttle -- the Endeavour -- depart from its last planned mission to the lab in November before the fleet is finally retired.

Wheelock said before the start that he was saddened to see the shuttle go, but he described his mission as an exciting new start.

"Of course, it's a big change in our program ... but change is not always bad," Wheelock, who takes over as commander of Expedition 25 as soon as the current crew returns to Earth in about three months, said at a prelaunch news conference.

With the shuttle being phased out, the venerable Soyuz will take over as the only means by which astronauts will be able to travel to the space station, which has raised some concern about over-reliance on the Soviet-designed craft.

A crowd of astronauts' relatives, space officials and others gasped with awe as they watched the rocket slowly disappearing at a distance, leaving a white cloud behind. They broke into applause on announcement of the craft's successful entry into orbit nine minutes after the launch.

"That was probably one of the more beautiful launches I have ever seen," NASA spokesman Josh Byerly said.

Shortly after, people at the launch pad saw the glittering dot of the space station quickly moving overhead in a rare coincidence.

Wednesday's liftoff marked a seminal landmark, being the hundredth flight in the station program.

Wheelock said their mission will be the first to take full advantage of the station's capacity as orbiting lab. He said he was particularly excited about the station's contributions to the engineering of new materials and its role in ensuring breakthroughs in medicine.

"We are finally getting to the point when we can use the international space station for its original purpose, and that is to do science and research, Byerly said after the launch.

Wheelock, a U.S. Army colonel, is returning to the space station for the first time since his two-week stint on the Discovery in late 2007, when he and his colleagues earned plaudits for their work repairing a power generation facility.

Walker is making her maiden trip to the space station, and thereby following in the footsteps of husband Andrew Thomas, one of a handful of U.S. astronauts to live onboard the old Russian Mir station in the 1990s.

Like other launches from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in southern Kazakhstan, their mission followed a time-tested routine.

After being meticulously fitted for their pressure suits just past midnight, the crew received a final message of encouragement from space officials, including the head of the Russian space agency.

At the final salute before mounting the bus to the launching pad, a group of well-wishers greeted Walker with letters spelling out "Go Shannon!"

Before the bus engines started up, Yurchikhin's young daughter, Yelena, was held aloft and kissed her father through the glass.

At the pad, the astronauts sat, tightly bound into their seats in the rocket some two hours before the launch, while their family and colleagues anxiously waited at a viewing platform a little more than one kilometer away.

Against the backdrop of the starkly dim steppe, lights on the gantry holding up the Soyuz rocket shimmered on the the launch pad known as Gagarin's Pad. It is the site from which the Soviet Union sent off Yuri Gagarin in 1961 to become the first human in space.

In the hour before the launch, regular updates on the final preparations crackled out of speakers at the viewing platform.

When the time came, the rocket roared to life and gradually lifted off the ground before darting off into the heavens, dramatically turning the sky a shade of phosphorous white.

The three-person crew will join Russian commander Alexander Skvortskov, NASA flight engineer Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Russia's Mikhail Kornienko, who have been on the orbiting laboratory since April.