Jean-Jacques Dordain during the Russian State Commission to approve the Soyuz launch of Expedition 30 crew members.
ESA astronaut André Kuipers is scheduled to be launched on 21 December from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan, on a Soyuz spacecraft. He will be flight engineer for Expeditions 30 and 31. Travelling together with Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and NASA astronaut Don Pettit, they will remain in space for nearly five months as part of the resident, international six-astronaut crew.