On April 05, 2010 at 10:21 UTC the "Discovery” American Space Shuttle (STS-131 flight) was launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA.
The shuttle Discovery carries a crew of seven and 10 tons of supplies and equipment bound for the International Space Station.
Seated are NASA astronauts Alan Poindexter (right), commander; and James Dutton Jr., pilot. Pictured from the left (standing) are NASA astronauts Richard Mastracchio, Stephanie Wilson, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Naoko Yamazaki and NASA astronaut Clayton Anderson, all mission specialists.
Discovery's launching continues an extremely busy period in the life of the space station, coming three days after launch of a Russian Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft carrying three fresh crew members - cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov, Mikhail Kornienko and NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson.
The Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft docked with the station early Sunday and its crew joined Expedition 23 commander Oleg Kotov, Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi and NASA flight engineer Timothy Creamer. The expanded Expedition 23 crew will, in turn, welcome the Discovery astronauts to the lab complex two days after the shuttle's launching.
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