Three astronauts successfully arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday to begin their four-month stay in space, the Moscow command centre said.
The latest upgrade of the Russian-made Soyuz rocket carrying US astronaut Kate Rubins, her Russian colleague Anatoly Ivanishin and Japan’s Takuya Onishi docked several minutes ahead of schedule after its two-day flight.
There are “now six humans living and working” on the space station, the US space agency tweeted.
Nasa pictures released online showed 37-year-old Rubins drifting through a hatch in the ISS and embracing her colleagues upon arrival.
The molecular biologist is set to be the first person to sequence DNA in space.
The trio join an ISS team of one US astronaut and two Russian astronauts already on board, having reached the station after 34 orbits of Earth used to test out the new Soyuz rocket.
The crew plan to mount a new adapter to allow easier docking for newer capsules.
Expedition 48 flight engineers Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos, Expedition 48 commander Jeff Williams of Nasa, (bottom, left to right) Kate Rubins of Nasa, Anatoly Ivanishin of Roscosmos, and astronaut Takuya Onishi communicate with Moscow Mission Control Centre in Korolov, Russia, after Rubins, Ivanishin, and Onishi docked their Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft to the International Space Station.
