MOSCOW, September 26 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s Soyuz TMA-10M spacecraft with a Russian-US crew has successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS), Federal Space Agency Roscosmos reported Thursday.
The spacecraft docked with the ISS at 06:45 a.m. Moscow Time (0245 GMT) Thursday, some six hours after the launch from the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan, the agency said in a statement on its website.
Roscosmos reported earlier in the day that a Russian Soyuz-FG rocket with the Soyuz TMA-10M blasted off for the ISS at 00:58 a.m. Moscow Time Thursday (2058 GMT Wednesday) from Baikonur.
The new expedition’s crew consists of Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky and NASA astronaut Michael Hopkins.
Kotov is the most experienced of the three crewmembers. He has flown two long-duration spaceflights aboard the ISS, logging just short of a year in space. Ryazansky and Hopkins have no previous spaceflight experience.
This is the third consecutive manned flight to the ISS under the “short” six-hour flight program. Before March this year, all manned Soyuz missions were carried out under a two-day scheme.
The current ISS crew comprises Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and astronauts Karen Nyberg of NASA and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency.
