NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Expedition 33/34 NASA Flight Engineer Kevin Ford, Soyuz Commander Oleg Novitskiy and Flight Engineer Evgeny Tarelkin are scheduled to launch in their Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft at 6:51 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, Oct. 23, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

NASA TV launch coverage will begin at 5:30 a.m., and include video of activities leading to the crew boarding its spacecraft.

NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP) partner Blue Origin conducted a successful pad escape test Oct. 19 at the company's West Texas launch site in Van Horn, firing its pusher-escape motor and launching a full-scale suborbital crew capsule from a simulated propulsion module.

The test was part of Blue Origin's work supporting its funded Space Act Agreement with NASA during Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2).

Curiosity collected a fourth scoop of soil on Sol 74 (Oct. 20). A later scoop will become the first delivered to the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument. While continuing with scooping activities at the "Rocknest" site, the rover also has been examining and monitoring environmental conditions surrounding the area.

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A comprehensive study of hundreds of galaxies observed by the Keck telescopes in Hawaii and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has revealed an unexpected pattern of change that extends back 8 billion years, or more than half the age of the universe.

Researchers say the distant blue galaxies they studied are gradually transforming into rotating disk galaxies like our own Milky Way.

Taking the guess work out of long-duration exploration is one of the benefits of the International Space Station. This orbiting laboratory serves as a test bed for technology and helps researchers understand how to prepare for extended trips in space.

Other benefits of this on-orbit testing include greater efficiency, design improvements to reduce equipment mass, and accelerated technology developments thanks to longer trial periods in microgravity.