New Crew, Olympic Torch Go to International Space Station on Soyuz Capsule

New crew members representing the United States, Russia and Japan have gone to the space station with Olympic torch.

Three crew members - NASA flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio, Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin of the Russuan Federal Space Agency and the flight Engineer Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency- are on their way to the International Space Station. The Olympic torch that will be used to light the Olympic flame at Fisht Stadium in Sochi, Russia, to mark the start of the 2014 Winter Games.

The three crew members were launched at 11.14 p.m. EST on November 7 from the Baikpnur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.

The Soyuz capsule is expected to dock with the space station at 5.31 a.m. Thursday. And at 7.40 a.m. the hatches are expected to open. Since October 2009, this is the first time that nine people have worked together aboard the space station.

"Some of the cargo flown aboard this Soyuz will be used in ongoing or planned research investigations aboard the orbiting laboratory. The cargo includes questionnaires for a space headaches investigation that crew members will complete to provide in-flight data about the prevalence and characteristics of headaches they may experience in microgravity. Other cargo includes hardware for an investigation looking at the impact of space travel on the immune system and on human microbiomes, which are microbes living in and on the human body," according to NASA press release.

With this launch, Wakata becomes the first ever Japanese commander of the station for Expedition 39.