Flight Engineers Roman Romanenko, Frank De Winne and Robert Thirsk of the 20th International Space Station crew were successfully launched in a Soyuz TMA-15 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 6:34 a.m. EDT Wednesday to start their six-month stay in space.

Expedition 20 marks the start of six-person crew operations aboard the International Space Station. All five of the international partner agencies — NASA, the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) — will be represented on orbit for the first time.