Russia has successfully resumed manned spaceflights to the International Space Station (ISS), launching a three person crew late on Sunday evening from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft is expected to dock with the space station late on Tuesday evening, November 15.

Launched at 11:14 p.m. EST on November 13, the launch took place mid-morning (10:14 a.m. Kazakhstan time) in a snowstorm – something you won't see at Florida's Space Coast. NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin are scheduled to dock with ISS at 11:33 p.m. on November 15, joining Expedition 29 Mike Fossum of NASA, Flight Engineers Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov.

But the crew of Expedition 29 won't be staying long. Launched back in June, a combination of in-orbit capsule time and winter settling over the Kazakhstan landing site means Fossum, Furukawa, and Volkov will quickly depart once they hand over the space station to the newly space station.   Expedition 29 departure is expected to occur on November 21, leaving ISS understaffed with three people until late December, when another three person crew is scheduled to arrive before the new year.

ISS needs a crew of six people in order to get about 40 hours of man-tended research per week accomplished. The failure of the unmanned Progress 44 supply mission in late August led to an interruption of all Russian launch activities until the country's space agency could identify and fix quality control problems with rocket suppliers.   The core Soyuz rocket is currently the primary launch vehicle to ISS for both Progress cargo supply missions and manned Soyuz crew transport trips.

NASA used the new space station crew launch press release to highlight U.S. commercial resupply demonstrations now scheduled to occur in the first part of 2012.   The SpaceX (News - Alert) Dragon berthing won't launch sooner than January, reports Spaceflight Now, since NASA needs to review the flight plan, test a final software load for the Dragon spacecraft, and get approval from the international partners for the flight. 

Meanwhile, Orbital Sciences (News - Alert) Corporation needs to conduct a test flight of its Taurus II rocket before it can launch its Cygnus cargo spacecraft for its demonstration mission. The test flight is now penciled in to occur in late February or early March 2012, with the Taurus II/Cygnus ISS supply demo flight to take place late in the second quarter of 2012.