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:
August 20, 2020

The Science module, which is scheduled to launch to the International Space Station in the spring of 2021, has arrived at the Baikonur cosmodrome. It…

full story
July 29, 2019

On July 28, 2019, the “Soyuz-2.1a” launch vehicle with the “Progress MS-12” cargo spaceship was removed from the Assembly and Testing building and installed at…

full story
October 10, 2014

Two satellites designed by Samara State Aerospace University students and scientists are planned to be launched in the framework of the first launch from Vostochny…

full story
April 19, 2013

According to RIA Novosti,  Russian enterprise Android Technics is developing a new robot SAR-401; at the end of September it will be tested in Gagarin…

full story
September 8, 2015

On September 7, 2015 Soyuz-STB booster with two European navigational satellites Galileo was rolled-out to the launchpad of Kourou spaceport. After installation Roscosmos specialists conducted…

full story
July 15, 2024

Vostochny Cosmodrome has received new racks that will allow storing several sets of Angara family launch vehicle blocks. “The assembled racking is located in the…

full story
November 28, 2013

Preparation works for Proton-M booster with Briz-M upper stage and Russian telecommunication space device Express-AM5 are under way at Baikonur spaceport. The teams of TSENKI…

full story
July 2, 2013

Previous week two assigned ISS crews made up of Alexander Samokutyaev, Elena Serova, Barry Wilmore and Anton Shkaplerov , Samantha Cristoforetti, Terry Werst had their…

full story