Soyuz crew approaches space station with head lights blazing. Photo Credit/NASA TV
A multi-national crew of astronauts docked with the International Space Station on Friday, restoring the number of men and woman living aboard the orbiting laboratory to six.
NASA’s Catherine Coleman, Dmitry Kondratyev of Russia and European Space Agency astronaut Paulo Nespoli of Italy linked their Soyuz capsule to the station’s Rassvet module on Friday at 2:11 p.m, EDT, as the two spacecraft sailed 224 miles over Mali in western Africa.
The linkup unfolded two days after their Soyuz lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The two-day transit was not interrupted by damage to a communications cable at a command post west of Russia’s Moscow Control Center in suburban Moscow on Thursday, Russian authorities told a post-docking news briefing. Backup communications systems were configured over two Soyuz orbits.
The Soyuz crew was greeted by station commander Scott Kelly, of NASA, and Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka, both of Russia.
The number of station tenants dropped from six to three on Nov. 25, when two Americans and a Russian made a scheduled descent to Earth.
Coleman, Kondratyev and Nespoli are in the earliest days of a five month voyage. When Kelly, Kaleri and Skripochka depart in mid-March, Kondratyev will assume command of the outpost.