May 29, 2013

According to RIA Novosti,  the Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft, carrying three new crew members to the International Space Station (ISS), docked with the station on Wednesday, a spokesman for the Russian space agency Roscosmos said.

“The spacecraft automatically docked with the ISS as scheduled, six hours after the launch. Fortunately, the cosmonauts did not have to switch to the manual docking regime,” he said.

“When pressure equalizes, hatches will be opened, and the new crew members will ‘float’ into the station,” the spokesman went on.

The flight took approximately six hours. Until March, it had taken two days for crews to go from Earth to the space station.

The spacecraft, carrying Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, and astronauts Karen Nyberg of NASA and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency, was launched at 00:31 Wednesday Moscow time (8:31 p.m. Tuesday GMT) and reached orbit some ten minutes later.

This is the fourth spaceflight for Yurchikhin, who will assume command of Expedition 37 once US astronaut Christopher Cassidy, and Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin, undock in November. This is flight engineer Nyberg’s first flight aboard a Soyuz, though she flew to the ISS on the shuttle Discovery in 2008. Parmitano has no prior spaceflight experience.

The planned length of the new ISS expedition is 172 days. Its members will perform 34 experiments and take part in the docking and unloading of four spacecraft – two Russian Progress space freighters, Europe’s ATV-4 cargo spacecraft and a US-made commercial unmanned resupply spacecraft Cygnus. Russian cosmonauts are also scheduled to perform several spacewalks.

Image credit – RIA Novosti

More from this category:
January 10, 2025

The Russian Defense Ministry reported that the duty forces of the ground-based automated complex of the Space Forces of the Russian Air and Space Forces…

full story
November 19, 2013

Express-AM5 Russian communication satellite developed and designed by Reshetnev “Information satellite systems” Company was delivered to Baikonur spaceport from where it will be launched. “The…

full story
June 18, 2018

On June 17, 2018 at 00:46 (Moscow time) from the State Test Cosmodrome “Plesetsk” military crew of the Russian Space Forces launched a space rocket…

full story
August 14, 2014

Russian cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov will pass the trainings in caves of Sardinia Island (Italy) in the period from September 7 to September…

full story
June 3, 2013

Dmitriy Zhukov, GCTC press-service chief:  Good evening! Let’s start the ball rolling. According to ISS flight program Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft with 36/37 ISS mission crew…

full story
June 25, 2015

Airbus Defence and Space  Khrunichev Centre started negotiating the use of Angara booster instead Rokot, – the spokesman reports. Airbus Defence and Space and Khrunichev…

full story
February 11, 2015

Under the contract with European Arianespace Company Russia will deliver 13 Soyuz-ST boosters to be launched from Kourou spaceport in French Guiana by 2019, –…

full story
January 15, 2014

New armament race in space, contamination of near-Earth space and asteroid danger are the most important threats to space activities of developed countries, – Roscosmos…

full story