International Space Station Crew Greets Their New Members

Shortly after the Russian Spacecraft Soyuz docked with the International Space Station, the new residents of the ISS entered the space station to meet the existing crew living on ISS since the last six months. It was the 11th mission to the International Space Station from the planet earth and they would now be expecting to host the Space Shuttle in the next couple of months.

The crew of this mission consisted of astronauts representing three nations: Russian Sergei Krikalev, American John Phillips, and Italian Roberto Vittori. While the first two would stay on the ISS for the next six months, Roberto Vittori would return with the current crew of the space station in a couple of days. The crewmembers entered the ISS at around 0446 GMT after opening the hatches of the docked Soyuz TMA-6 spacecraft. The docking took place earlier at around 0219 GMT.

During the period while the crew changes guard, the group of five astronauts would work together on the space station. As per Nikolai Moisyeyev, deputy head of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos): “The crew are to unload two Progress supply ships and two shuttles, make two spacewalks and conduct several dozen difficult scientific experiments”.

They would also be taking care of welcoming the upcoming shuttle mission and monitor the condition of the shuttle’s insulating tiles as it approaches the Space Station during the course of its mission. This is to prevent a similar accident happening to the spacecraft as it happened with Columbia, which disintegrated in the space itself while coming back to Earth killing all the astronauts overboard.