The next three-person ISS crew is on its way (updated)

Astronaut Jeff Williams and Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka have been selected as the crew for Expedition 47 on the International Space Station. They're scheduled to take off for a six-month stay in orbit at 5:25 PM Eastern Friday. The trio will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz spacecraft and dock with the station roughly six hours later. You can watch the launch live at NASA Television starting at 4:30 PM Eastern.

This mission marks Williams' third trip to the ISS and, by the time he returns, he will hold the record for total time in space -- a whopping 534 days spent outside the Earth's gravitational confines. The current 520-day record is held by astronaut Scott Kelly, who just got back from orbit at the start of the month.

Update: The launch was successful, and the Soyuz craft is on its way to the ISS, watch the replay below, and tune back in for a live stream of the docking process at 10:30PM ET.