March 18, 2006. Baikonur Cosmodrome.

The prime crew (Pavel V. Vinogradov (Russia), Jeffrey N. Williams (USA), Marcos C. Pontes (Brazil)) and backup crew (Fyodor N. Yurchikhin (Russia), Edward M. Fincke (USA), Sergey A. Volkov (Russia)) of the Soyuz TMA-8 transport spacecraft arrived to the cosmodrome to accomplish training and accept the spacecraft.