Canadian astronaut Bob Thirsk is on his way to the International Space Station Wednesday after successfully launching into space on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
Thirsk, along with Russian astronaut Roman Romanenko and Belgian astronaut Frank De Winne, blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 6:34 a.m. ET.
"We feel fine. All is in order," Thirsk said by radio from the Soyuz.
Footage broadcast by NASA TV showed the three astronauts waving and giving the thumbs-up for the camera.
The 55-year-old will spend six months on the ISS, making him the first Canadian to embark on a long-duration space flight.
The Soyuz is due to dock with the ISS on Friday.
As the Soyuz blasted off, Thirsk's three children and his 81-year-old mother, Eva, cheered from a viewing stand about 1.5 kilometres away.
"He's doing what he's wants to do," she said. "And he's so happy about it. And I'm so happy for him."
About 100 guests, including some of Thirsk's family and friends, gathered at the Canadian Space Agency south of Montreal to watch the launch on a big screen.
"I'm extremely excited, it's almost indescribable," Thirsk's brother-in-law Emmanuel Triassi said.
Former Canadian astronaut Bjarni Tryggvason said the Soyuz is one of the most reliable vehicles to take astronauts into space but it's not the most comfortable.
"It's very cramped and in the next two days that it takes for the Soyuz to catch up to the space station they have to just work in this very small volume," Tryggvason told CTV's Canada AM on Wednesday.
"There's another compartment they can go into for using the bathroom facilities but again it's very, very tight quarters."
Once they arrive, the crew on the ISS, the largest man-made object in orbit, will grow to six -- the largest-ever on the space station.
During his time on the ISS, Thirsk will be taking medication given to people with osteoporosis so researchers can examine its impact on minimizing bone loss.
He'll also have to deal with the psychological effects of isolation and confinement and the longer exposure to ionizing radiation.
Thirsk also had to learn Russian prior to the mission and spent a year training outside of Moscow.
Future missions
Tryggvason said the research that will be done on the ISS will help for future missions.
"It acts as a stepping stone for the next big program, which is returning people to the moon," Tryggvason said.
"Hopefully we'll have Canadians involved in that and so in perhaps 10 years from now we'll see a Canadian walking on the moon.
It may be a while before another Canadian returns to space, however.
"It'll be five years from now," Pierre Jean, Canada's space station program manager, told The Cnadian Press. "And the next one (after that) will be five years later."
In September, a Japanese cargo vehicle, called HTV, will rendezvous with the station and Thirsk will have to use the Canadarm 2 to connect it to the ISS.
Thirsk will also complete an experiment where he'll control a roving robot at the CSA headquarters in Montreal from the ISS.
Next month, fellow Canadian astronaut Julie Payette will visit Thirsk as part of her 16-day mission aboard the space shuttle Endeavour.
Thirsk's last flight was a 17-day flight aboard Columbia in 1996.
