A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts arrived on the Worldwide House Station (ISS) this afternoon after a quick orbital chase.
A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying NASA’s Don Pettit and Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner of the Russian house company Roscosmos docked with the ISS at present at 3:32 p.m. EDT (1932 GMT), as the 2 spacecraft flew 260 miles (418 kilometers) over central Ukraine. That was simply three hours, and two orbits of Earth, after their launch atop a Soyuz rocket from the Russia-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The hatches between the Soyuz and the ISS are anticipated to open at 5:50 p.m. EDT (2150 GMT). You possibly can watch that milestone dwell right here at House.com, courtesy of NASA; protection begins at 5:30 p.m. EDT (2230 GMT).
Pettit, Ovchinin and Vagner will spend about six months aboard the ISS, as a part of the orbiting lab’s Expedition 71 and 72 missions. They will come again to Earth subsequent spring.
Associated: Soyuz rocket launches new US-Russian crew of three to ISS (video)
At this time’s launch was the fourth general for the 69-year-old Pettit, the oldest lively member of NASA’s astronaut corps. He first flew in November 2002, on the house shuttle Endeavour’s STS-113 mission, and has spent a complete of 370 days off Earth to this point.
Ovchinin now has 4 launches beneath his belt as nicely, all of them aboard a Soyuz. He has reached the ISS on three on them; the opposite liftoff, on Oct. 11, 2018, ended early as a result of a Soyuz rocket downside in flight. Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague landed safely of their Soyuz spacecraft that day, lower than 20 minutes after launch.
Vagner has been to house as soon as earlier than, spending about six months aboard the ISS in 2020.
Pettit, Ovchinin and Vagner are becoming a member of 9 different individuals on the ISS — NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Tracy Caldwell-Dyson, Matthew Dominick, Jeanette Epps, Barry Wilmore and Suni Williams, and Roscosmos’ Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin and Oleg Kononenko.
Wilmore and Williams had been the first-ever crew for Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which returned to Earth uncrewed final weekend after struggling thruster issues in orbit. Wilmore and Williams will get a experience house on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule subsequent February.
There are presently seven different individuals in orbit as nicely — three astronauts on China’s Tiangong house station and the 4 crewmembers of the personal Polaris Daybreak mission, who’re residing aboard a free-flying SpaceX Crew Dragon for the subsequent few days. The full of 19 individuals in orbit is a brand new document, NASA officers stated in at present’s Soyuz launch broadcast.
