Soyuz With Richard Garriott Successfully Launched 56
Toren Altair writes "Soyuz TMA-13 with ISS Expedition Crew 18 and Richard Garriott successfully launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome at 7:01 UT (3:01 EDT). The Soyuz capsule will dock to the ISS in two days. Garriott will return to Earth with Expedition 17 crew members, Commander Sergei Volkov and Flight Engineer Oleg Kononenko on October 23."
With the extra attention on this launch, the Russians have gone out of their way to say that the return of the Soyuz vehicle will be safe, after a couple of different malfunctions in the past year. Garriott is in space partly for recreation, and partly as a promotion for his latest MMO, Tabula Rasa. He took with him a hard drive filled with information about humanity, as well as DNA sequences from Tabula Rasa players and various celebrities (including Stephen Colbert and Stephen Hawking) to 'preserve' that data in case of a disaster on Earth. Garriott will also spend time running and participating in experiments. Coverage of the Soyuz mission is ongoing at NASATV.
Don't forget the SSTV! (Score:5, Informative)
From October 14, Richard Garriot will be sending back SSTV images [wikipedia.org] from the ISS. Today they're planning to test some of the equipment currently on the ISS by sending SSTV between 1800UTC and 2100UTC. Unfortunately there won't be any usable passes over where I live before 1800, but I'll still be listening on 145.800MHz just in case...
If you're interested in trying to receive images or other radio transmissions from the ISS, you can get information on its passes from Heavens Above [heavens-above.com] or by using prediction software like gpredict. You may find you need a larger antenna than the "rubber duck" that most scanners and handheld radios come with, but if you're far enough south to get a good high pass you might manage to hear it. For receiving SSTV you'll need some sort of gain antenna like a Yagi, really. In Linux, you can use qsstv for decoding the SSTV images.