New Crewmates Board the Space Station
25 November 2014
Early Monday morning, six hours after a sky-lighting launch, a spacecraft docked safely on the International Space Station and three new residents floated into their new home for the first time.
The astronauts are Samantha Cristoforetti, Anton Shkaplerov, and Terry Virts. They will spend the next five months living and working aboard the Space Station, carrying out experiments in zero gravity.
Since the Space Shuttle fleet was retired 3 years ago, Russian Soyuz spacecraft are the only way to ferry astronauts to and from the Space Station. Like all Soyuz spacecraft, the launch took place at the remote Cosmodrome base in Kazakhstan, Central Asia.
Just six hours after liftoff the astronauts arrived, which is roughly the time it takes to drive from Paris to Amsterdam!
The new crewmates were welcomed aboard by three existing residents of the orbiting station, Elena Serova, Barry Wilmore and Alexander Samokutyaev.
Samantha and her crew will now be aboard the station until May next year, while the other three will return to Earth in early March.
You can keep track of Samantha’s ‘Futura’ mission on her blog at outpost42.esa.int.
Cool Fact: The Soyuz spacecraft have been hurtling into space for almost 50 years. The first Soyuz flight was launched way back in November 1966!
