Soyuz Plans April 2, 2010 Flight to ISS

Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov, fellow Russian Mikhail Korniyenko and American NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson, will take off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in the desert steppes of Kazakhstan on April 2, 2010 aboard a Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft rocketing to the International Space Station. The crew will spend two days in a Soyuz capsule before arriving at the ISS, where they plan to join NASA astronaut Timothy Creamer, Soichi Noguchi of Japan and Oleg Kotov of Russia.The space shuttle Discovery is set to depart the Kennedy Space Center on the morning of April 5, 2010 to subsequently dock with the space station. The seven space shuttle astronauts will converge with the six astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the ISS for Expedition 23. There are only four space shuttle flights remaining in the American flight manifest.The head of Russia's space agency Roskosmos Anatoly Perminov said on Friday that a moratorium on space tourism to the ISS would continue "for two or three years," as NASA will remain reliant on the three-seater Soyuz launch for missions. "There are many people interested. Very many countries have made requests, but now it is physically impossible for us," Perminov said, the Interfax news agency reported. Jack@JackKennedy.net