BAIKONUR (Kazakhstan), November 24 (Sputnik) – A Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft that was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome some six hours ago has docked automatically with the International Space Station (ISS), a Roscosmos representative told RIA Novosti.
"The interference of the crew in the Kurs [docking] system, luckily, was not required. The spacecraft docked with the Russian segment of the ISS automatically," the Russian Federal Space Agency representative said.
Late Sunday, the Soyuz TMA-15M was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome's Site 31. The three crew members aboard the spacecraft included NASA's Terry Virts, Roscosmos' Anton Shkaplerov and European Space Agency's Samantha Cristoforetti.
The crew is expected to spend 169 days on the orbit and carry out work with Russian cargo spacecraft Progress and European cargo spacecraft ATV-5.
On November 22, Roscosmos told RIA Novosti that the state commission at Baikonur Cosmodrome approved the new ISS crew.
