A veteran Russian space station commander, a rookie cosmonaut and a NASA shuttle flier are set for launch aboard a Russian Soyuz ferry craft Tuesday, kicking off a four-orbit rendezvous with the International Space Station to boost the lab's crew back to six.

Steve Swanson, Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev will launch aboard the Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft. Photo credit: NASA/Victor Zelentsov Despite Russia's annexation of Crimea and escalating superpower tit-for-tat sanctions, U.S. and Russian space engineers are continuing to cooperate on the high frontier, jointly operating the most complex spacecraft ever built.

Three fresh crew members - Soyuz TMA-12M commander Alexander Skvortsov, flight engineer Oleg Artemyev and NASA astronaut Steven Swanson -- are scheduled to blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Tuesday at 5:17:23 p.m. EDT (GMT-4; 3:17 a.m. Wednesday local time).

If all goes well, Skvortsov will oversee an automated docking at the station's upper Poisk module around 11:04 p.m. Tuesday. Standing by to welcome the trio aboard will be Expedition 39 commander Koichi Wakata, cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio.

Wakata and his two crewmates have had the station to themselves since March 11 when Soyuz TMA-10M commander Oleg Kotov, Sergey Ryazanskiy and Mike Hopkins returned to Earth. Wakata and his crewmates are scheduled to follow suit in their Soyuz TMA-11M ferry craft on May 13.

That will clear the way for launch of Soyuz TMA-13M commander Maxim Suraev, a Russian space veteran, and two rookies: European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst and NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman.

In a March 18 interview in Houston, Suraev said escalating tension over Russia's actions in Ukraine, and the response of the United States and its allies, "is something for big bananas and some politician guys, not for us."

"We are just doing our job," he said, speaking in heavily accented English. "We are flying, we are studying, we are training, we are cosmonauts." Then, with a laugh, he added "for me personally, I'm not ready to answer this question, especially before my flight! Especially when I'm here in the U.S., especially when I'm interviewing U.S. media! Ask this of our politician guys."

Wiseman, a former Navy F-14 carrier pilot, was less reticent, saying "the politics starts to fall by the wayside" when working with Russian space engineers, flight controllers and cosmonauts on a daily basis.

"Working with my commander and all the Russian trainers over there, these people are not just my colleagues, they're all my friends," he said. "And so sure, we don't want to see political turmoil, and it could ultimately get in the way of our spaceflight.

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Soyuz rocket ready to launch joint U.S.-Russian space crew