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I can't think of anything that's as exciting as I'm sure this mission will be, and actually being in space. But, we did some training as a crew together.

Since there always has to be a certain number of astronauts manning the station at all times, one of the main aspects of the mission was to transport a new team to the station and bring back some members of the previous team back to Earth.

Our goal is to tell people about the International Space Station. I think very rarely people look up 250 miles and think, What are those guys working on, what are those men and women doing at this moment... They're living and doing regular things, but also doing incredible work as well. We really want to bring that to people.

As always, we prepare for all sorts of contingencies. And the first few days of the flight up until docking on Day 3 are all spent really in the rendezvous because we launch at a time that puts us in an optimal position to catch up to station.

Well, we have two major goals. The most important one is to get the station arm on board the station, because that's this really milestone in the space station building since from now on they will be using this arm to continue building the space station.

The first two missions have some test objectives, some new capabilities that we're going to try to develop on orbit to possibly be used on later flights.

We used to have a crew of three on board the space station and even at one time a crew of two people, so it's something we can adjust to.

And not only that but... when the station is completed, there will be an international crew made of astronauts coming from different cultural experiences, speaking different languages, but working together for a common goal.

Astronauts are very professional and when they're preparing for launch, they prepare for it as the most serious endeavor of our lives.

We also had to bring with us some desired scientific equipment over to the station as well as assemble new machines. For that, I had to conduct two space walks.