China has now completed four successful flights of its Shenzhou capsule, based on Russia's Soyuz model.
At the moment, Soyuz is used at Baikonur to launch astronauts to the International Space Station.
Basing Soyuz in French Guiana should give the rocket a new lease of life.
"We've completed the transfer into the Soyuz and the leak checks, " Culbertson told Mission Control.
In April last year, Seoul sent its first astronaut into space aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket.
They will head to Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard a Soyuz TMA-17 capsule on 1 June.
Obviously the human cargo appreciates spending less time in the cramped quarters of the Soyuz.
Last Friday, a Soyuz malfunctioned soon after launching from the Plesetsk spaceport in northern Russia.
The experiment travelled to the International Space Station on a Soyuz in October of 2011.
But this go around, the Soyuz only orbited four times before hooking up with the space station.
For veteran Nasa astronaut Dan Burbank, 50, it is his first voyage on board a Soyuz spacecraft.
Five days after a failed launch, the Russian Soyuz rocket system has been pressed back into service.
Last week's Soyuz was a type 2.1b, compared with the 2.1a version used for the Globalstar mission.
The first of 22 OHB-SSTL spacecraft should launch next year, again on a Soyuz from French Guiana.
In 1978, Sigmund Jahn became the first German in space when he blasted off aboard Russia's Soyuz 31.
The December Soyuz mission will restore the space station crew size to six and continue normal crew rotations.
To get there, he will ride a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.
BBC: UK astronaut Tim Peake to go to International Space Station
Soyuz has become the sole means of getting people to the 400km-high outpost.
They will be joined by three more following Thursday's Soyuz launch from Kazakhstan.
Russia's recent poor launch record has continued with yet another Soyuz rocket failure.
In Baikonur and Plesetsk, the satellites are always attached to the Soyuz while the rocket is still in the horizontal.
The Soyuz will dock with Mir this weekend as the shuttle is scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center.
At 6:51am ET this morning, the Soyuz TMA-06M launched from the Russian launch site at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
In August, a Soyuz failure on a mission to resupply the space station led to a six-week suspension of flights.
You can pay for a seat on the Russian Soyuz craft that regularly fly to the International Space Station (ISS).
BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | Space future: Race for the X-Prize
Analysts believe the Shenzhou spacecraft that China is developing is an enlarged copy of the Soviet-era workhorse - the Soyuz.
BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | China manned space mission nears
About four minutes later, the announcer said the Soyuz was traveling at 4, 700 miles per hour (about 7, 500 kilometers per hour).
The return home is not a smooth transition from weightlessness to 1-g for astronauts that return home via the Soyuz capsule.
FORBES: What's It Like Experiencing Gravity After Being In Space For 6 Months?
Thursday, a Soyuz capsule docked with the orbiting laboratory after less than six hours of flight time, setting a record.
This time, a Soyuz-2 vehicle failed to put a communications satellite into orbit after lifting away from the country's Plesetsk spaceport.
应用推荐