WASHINGTON, Sept. 13, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA Television will provide extensive coverage live from Kazakhstan of the Sept. 25 launch of three crew members of Expedition 37-38, as they begin their journey to the International Space Station.

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Michael Hopkins of NASA and Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) will depart from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 4:58 p.m. EDT (2:58 a.m. Kazakh time Sept. 26) aboard a Soyuz spacecraft headed for the space station. NASA Television coverage will begin at 4 p.m. and will include video of pre-launch activities leading up to spacecraft boarding.

Hopkins and Ryazanskiy are flight engineers, and Kotov commands the Soyuz spacecraft, which will rendezvous with the space station and dock after four orbits of Earth. Docking to the Poisk module on the Russian segment of the station will take place at 10:47 p.m. NASA TV coverage of docking will begin at 10 p.m.

At about 12:25 a.m. Sept. 26, hatches between the Soyuz and the space station will open. Expedition 37 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of Roscosmos, as well as Flight Engineers Karen Nyberg of NASA and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency will greet Hopkins, Kotov and Ryazanskiy. Hatch-opening coverage begins on NASA TV at midnight.

Hopkins, Kotov and Ryazanskiy will remain aboard the station until mid-March. Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano, who have been aboard the orbiting laboratory since late May, will return to Earth Nov. 11, leaving Kotov as commander of Expedition 38.

For the full schedule of prelaunch and launch coverage, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/stationnews

For information on the International Space Station, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

For NASA TV streaming video, scheduling and downlink information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

SOURCE NASA

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