The Dutch astronaut Andr Lwa Kuipers, together with two colleagues, successfully launched in a Soyuz rocket from the baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Kuipers will with both colleagues five months in the international space station stay.
The Soyuz rocket was at 14:16 launched. The 53-year-old Kuipers is for the ESA-mission PromISSe accompanied by the American NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Russian Oleg Kononenko. The three will be almost a half years conducting scientific experiments in the international space station (ISS). After the launch Wednesday and after two days in orbit around the earth have cycled, the Soyuz TMA-3M-capsule to the ISS linked.
Kuipers is the third Dutch-born person in space. Wubbo Ockels, went before him in 1985 with a Space Shuttle mission, while Lodewijk van den Berg, Dutch by birth, but later naturalized as a American, yet a half-year for Using the space went. Kuipers himself has his baptism of fire also already had; in 2004, he flew all of a space mission. This space trip lasted for ten days.
According to the schedule, will the astronauts in the ISS almost thirty scientific experiments in the fields of biology, physics, chemistry, and materials. One of the experiments Kuipers will perform is the controlling of a robot on earth from the space station. This test falls under the Meteron program, which simulated how the celestial bodies with the help of a small robot can be studied. In the future such robots can be controlled from a space around an object of interest circles.
During the Meteron experiment will be André Kuipers from the ISS and a Rover-robot control to new network technology to the test. The experiment is on behalf of the ESA is controlled by the Belgian B. USOC.
To keep in touch with friends and family, Kuipers once per week, a direct video conference with its own living room, in Noord-Holland. In addition, Kuipers e-mail, tweet and call. The three astronauts in the ESA-planning on may 16, back to the earth. The Soyuz capsule lands on the steppes of Kazakhstan. A day later, he is brought to the NASA headquarters in the U.s. city of Houston flown.