This Is What It Feels Like to Finally Reach Space

The Soyuz-FG rocket booster with Soyuz TMA-09M space ship carrying a new crew to the International Space Station, ISS, blasts off at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Wednesday, May 29, 2013.

The Soyuz-FG rocket booster with Soyuz TMA-09M space ship carrying a new crew to the International Space Station, ISS, blasts off at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Wednesday, May 29, 2013. Mikhail Metzel/AP

Smiles on the faces of all the astronauts last night as they boarded the International Space Station

The smiles on their faces say it all. Last night, a little after midnight on the East coast, three astronauts floated off a Russian Soyuz space capsule and onto the International Space Station where they will live for the next six months. The astronauts (from left to right: Fyodor Yurchikhin of Russia, Karen L. Nyberg of the USA, and Luca Parmitano of Italy) had departed just eight hours earlier from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Read more at The Atlantic .