The Soyuz remained docked to the space station during Expeditions 36 and 37 to serve as an emergency escape vehicle.

The crew of Soyuz TMA-09M consisted of Fyodor Yurchikhin of Roscosmos, Karen Nyberg of NASA and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency.

Launch took place at 20:31:00 UTC on 28 May 2013, with a Soyuz-FG carrier rocket propelling the spacecraft into low Earth orbit.

The spacecraft separated from the upper stage of the carrier rocket nine minutes after liftoff.

Docking with the ISS, using the nadir port of the Rassvet module, occurred at 02:10 UTC on 29 May, less than six hours after launch as part of a fast rendezvous profile designed to minimise the time the crew must spend in the cramped Soyuz spacecraft.