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With the statue of Vladimir Lenin serving as a backdrop at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, a throng of well-wishers say goodbye to the Expedition 39/40 prime and backup crewmembers March 13 after they boarded a bus to go a nearby airfield for the flight to their launch site at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Prime crewmembers Steve Swanson of NASA, Alexander Skvortsov of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos will launch to the International Space Station March 26, Kazakh time , in the Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft for a six-month mission. NASA/Stephanie Stoll