Expedition 33/34 crew members, NASA Astronaut and Flight Engineer Kevin Ford, front left, Russian Cosmonaut and Soyuz Commander Oleg Novitskiy, and Russian Cosmonaut and Flight Engineer Evgeny Tarelkin, back left, stop at the base of the Soyuz rocket for a formal farewell from President of the S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia Vitaly Lopota, back right, General Director of the Russian Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos, Vladimir Popovkin, right center, and NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations William Gerstenmaier prior to the crews launch onboard a Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft to the International Space Station, Tuesday, October 23, 2012, in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Launch of the Soyuz rocket will send Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin on a five-month mission aboard the International Space Station. Photo Credit: (NASA/GCTC/Andrey Shelepin)