Photo: Leaving Earth on A Soyuz

The Soyuz TMA-20 rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 2:09 p.m. (EST) on Dec. 15, 2010 (1:09 a.m., Dec. 16 Kazakhstan time) carrying Russian cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev, Expedition 26 Soyuz commander and flight engineer; along with NASA astronaut Catherine (Cady) Coleman and European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli, both flight engineers, to the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA/Carla Cioffi high res (0.6 M) low res (52 K)