BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (AP) -- Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, American astronaut Michael Fincke and Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers hoisted their national flags Thursday ahead of a planned mission to the international space station.
The three are to lift off Monday aboard a Russian Soyuz TMA-4 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome amid the steppes of western Kazakhstan, Russia's launch site for manned space missions.
Since last year's space shuttle disaster, Russian rockets have been the only means to get to the space station. The European Space Agency has no facilities to send astronauts into space and regularly uses Russian spacecraft.
Monday's launch will be the third since the halt of the U.S. shuttle program following the February 2003 Columbia disaster.
In a brief ceremony on a sunny Thursday, members of the Expedition 9 primary and backup crews raised their national flags outside their Cosmonaut hotel, where they are spending their last days before launch.
Expedition commander Padalka, 45, spent 198 days in space in 1998-1999 as a crew commander aboard the Russian Mir station. He is to spend another 183 days on the international space station during this mission, which will be Fincke's first in space.
Fincke, 37, will serve as NASA's science officer and flight engineer.
It will also be the first launch for the ESA's Kuipers, 45, the second flight engineer. He will return to Earth nine days after the launch together with the space station's current crew, U.S. astronaut Michael Foale and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri, who have been working there since October.
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