New Expedition 37 Crew Launches to Space Station. The Soyuz TMA-10M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Sept. 25 at 4:58 p.m. EDT (2:58 a.m. Kazakh time Sept. 26) carrying Expedition 37 Soyuz Commander Oleg Kotov, NASA Flight Engineer Michael Hopkins and Russian Flight Engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy to the International Space Station. Image Credit: NASA/Carla Cioffi
The Soyuz TMA-10M spacecraft carrying a new trio of Expedition 37 crew members docked Wednesday at 10:45 p.m. EDT.
The International Space Station is seen from a Soyuz TMA-10M camera as it approaches for docking. Image Credit: NASA TV
New Expedition 37 crew members Oleg Kotov, Mike Hopkins and Sergey Ryazanskiy were welcomed aboard the International Space Station Thursday at 12:34 a.m. EDT. They docked to the Poisk mini-research module Wednesday at 10:45 p.m. EDT aboard a Soyuz TMA-10M spacecraft.
They launched just four orbits earlier at 4:58 p.m. from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. After the hatches opened the new residents were greeted by Expedition 37 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineers Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano.
Someone's at the door!
Kotov, Hopkins and Ryazanskiy are scheduled for a five-and-a-half month stay in space living and working inside the orbital laboratory. They are due to return home in March 2014 landing in Kazakhstan inside the same Soyuz spacecraft they arrived in.
This is Kotov’s third space station mission. He served as a flight engineer for Expedition 15 in 2007. Kotov was also commander in 2010 for Expedition 23. Hopkins and Ryazanskiy are both on their first space mission.
The current ISS crew comprises Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, and astronauts Karen Nyberg of NASA and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency. Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano have been aboard the space station since May 28. They have seen the arrival of two international resupply ships and one commercial cargo craft.
Since they began their mission, Yurchikhin has participated in three Russian spacewalks. Parmitano conducted two U.S. spacewalks. Nyberg captured Japan’s Kounotori-4 resupply ship while at the controls of the Canadarm2.