Crew confident ahead of first flight since failed Soyuz launch

Russian, American and Canadian astronauts will blast off Monday for the first manned Soyuz mission since a frightening failed launch in October, with the three feeling confident despite the risks.

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, Anne McClain of NASA and David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency will launch at 1131 GMT aboard a Soyuz from Baikonur in Kazakhstan for a six-and-a-half month mission on the International Space Station.

It will be the first manned launch for the Soviet-era Soyuz since October 11, when a rocket carrying Russia's Aleksey Ovchinin and US astronaut Nick Hague failed just minutes after blast-off, forcing the pair to make an emergency landing.

They escaped unharmed but the failed launch -- the first such incident in Russia's post-Soviet history -- raised concerns about the state of the Soyuz programme.

The Soyuz is the only means of reaching the ISS since the United States retired the space shuttle in 2011.

Kononenko, McClain and Saint-Jacques showed no signs of worry as they boarded a bus on Monday to take them to the launch. They smiled and waved, with Saint-Jacques blowing kisses and giving the thumbs-up to a crowd of well-wishers.

At a press conference on the eve of the launch, crew commander Kononenko said the astronauts "absolutely" trusted teams preparing for the flight.

"Risk is part of our profession," the 54-year-old said.

"We are psychologically and technically prepared for blast-off and any situation which, God forbid, may occur on board."
Saint-Jacques joked that he had received so much training ahead of the flight "that I felt at the end that I could build a Soyuz in my backyard."