Live coverage: New space station crew counting down to liftoff

Live coverage of the Expedition 48 mission on the International Space Station

he three-person crew has boarded the Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft at Launch Pad No. 1 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome for liftoff at 0136:41 GMT (9:36:41 p.m. EDT).

The crew is led by Anatoly Ivanishin, a 47-year-old retired Russian Air Force fighter pilot who is making is second trip into space. Ivanishin was selected a cosmonaut in 2003 and completed initial training in 2005, then spent 165 days on the International Space Station in 2011 and 2012.

Ivanishin will occupy the capsule's center seat, with Japanese flight engineer Takuya Onishi and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins flanking him in the left and right couches.

Onishi will be the primary flight engineer, assisting Ivanishin with control duties during the launch and docking, which is set for 0412:02 GMT (12:12:02 a.m. EDT) Saturday.

Making his first spaceflight, the 40-year-old Onishi will become the 11th Japanese citizen to fly in space. Before his selection as an astronaut in 2009, Onishi was a Boeing 767 co-pilot for All Nippon Airways. He earned a Bachelor's degree in aeronautical and space engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1998.

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, 37, is also launching on her first mission into orbit.

Born in Farmington, Connecticutt, and raised in Napa, California, Rubins received a Bachelor of Science degree in Molecular Biology from the University of California, San Diego, in 1999 and a Ph.D. in Cancer Biology in 2005 from Stanford University Medical School's Biochemistry Department and Microbiology and Immunology Department.

She worked for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and developed the first model of smallpox infection. Rubins later joined the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT, traveling to Africa to research therapies for the Ebola, Marbug and Lassa Fever viruses.

The trio are scheduled to spend 115 days in orbit -- and 113 days on the space station -- before coming back to Earth on Oct. 30.

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