The three Americans and one Japanese should reach the International Space Station late Monday for a five- to six-month stay, following Sunday's liftoff from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
A brief look at each:—Crew commander Mike Hopkins, 51, is an Air Force colonel and former space station resident who grew up on a hog and cattle farm in Missouri.
He played football for the University of Illinois and, before becoming an astronaut in 2009, worked at the Pentagon.
—Shannon Walker, 55, a Houston-born-and-raised physicist, also has lived before on the space station.
She worked as a flight controller at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and then behind the scenes in the space station program, before becoming an astronaut in 2004.