Engineers are making final preparations for launch of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft this weekend to ferry an all-veteran U.S.-Russian-Japanese crew to the International Space Station to boost the lab's crew complement back to six. The launch will kick off a "fantastically busy" timeline, with nine space station "visiting vehicle" operations and two spacewalks over the next six weeks.

Her ride -- the Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft -- is scheduled for liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 10:40:03 p.m. EDT Saturday (GMT-4; 8:40 a.m. Sunday local time), the 37th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project that opened the door to U.S.-Russian space cooperation.

"They've got a fantastically busy mission ahead of them, they are looking toward nine visiting vehicles during the time they're up on board the space station, which is really a lot of coming and going," said NASA chief astronaut Peggy Whitson, a veteran space station commander. "It's going to take a lot of choreography by the ground teams and the crews on orbit to make this all happen. It'll be a very challenging and exciting time for them."

At the controls in the cramped Soyuz command module's center seat will be Soyuz commander Yuri Malenchenko, veteran of a stay aboard the Mir space station, two long-duration expeditions aboard the International Space Station and a space shuttle station assembly flight. He has logged a combined total of 515 days in space.

Williams, strapped in to Malenchenko's left, spent 195 days in space during a space station expedition in 2006 and 2007, riding to and from the lab complex aboard a space shuttle. Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, who helped activate the station's Japanese research module during a 14-day 2008 shuttle flight, will be seated in the Soyuz command module's right seat.

If all goes well, Malenchenko will oversee an automated approach to the space station, docking at the Earth-facing Rassvet module around 12:52 a.m. EDT Tuesday. Standing by to welcome them aboard will be Expedition 32 commander Gennady Padalka, cosmonaut Sergei Revin and NASA astronaut Joseph Acaba, who were launched to the lab on May 15.

A veteran Navy helicopter pilot, Williams is the 13th NASA astronaut trained to fly as a left-seat "board engineer" -- effectively the co-pilot -- aboard a Soyuz spacecraft. As such, she is trained to carry out a rendezvous or fly the craft back to Earth if illness or some other mishap prevented Malenchenko from carrying out his duties.

"It's been a little bit of a long road, it's been about a two-and-a-half-year training flow and as a left seater, you're here in Russia probably almost 50 percent of the time learning about the spacecraft, learning not only about it, but how to operate it, how to fly it, rendezvous, manual descents, and so it's pretty intense," Williams said.

"But the training program is awesome, the folks at Star City (near Moscow) are really great and they really get you prepared. I really feel pretty confident, particularly after being a backup, about the possibility, if anything happened to Yuri, that I'd be able to dock the spacecraft and manually bring it back home. I think that's pretty huge when you think about it."

During her first spaceflight, Williams made the climb into space strapped in on the space shuttle's lower deck with no major responsibilities for getting the ship to its destination. Going into her first station mission, Williams was focused on upcoming spacewalks and normal work aboard the lab complex. This time around, she will serve as a space station flight engineer until Padalka's crew departs in mid September. At that point, Williams will become commander of Expedition 33, the second woman to take on that responsibility.

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Soyuz TMA-05M set for crew launch to space station