At the airport in Baikonur Kazakhstan backup Expedition to begin a 5 ½ month mission on the International Space Station.

At the airport in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, backup Expedition 36/37 Flight Engineer Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (left) backup Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin (center) and backup Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio (right) are greeted by local residents May 16 as they arrived at the launch site for final preparations for the launch of prime crewmembers Karen Nyberg of NASA, Soyuz Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineer Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency May 29, Kazakh time, in their Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft to begin a 5 ½ month mission on the International Space Station.

NASA/Victor Zelentsov