The & # XE9; crew of the International Space Station waiting to meet astronauts have arrived & # XE9; s & # xE0; Soyuz spaceship, March 28, 2015 .
Crew International Space Station waiting to meet astronauts who arrived aboard the Soyuz, March 28, 2015 – NASA

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The Soyuz, On board an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts launched Friday night Baikonur docked early Saturday to the International Space Station (ISS), where two of them begin an unprecedented one-year mission.

The Soyuz-TMA16M took off as scheduled at 20:42 French time from the cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on a flight without a 5:51 minute problem to reach the orbital outpost and tie it. The three occupants of the Soyuz, the Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Kornienko and American astronaut Scott Kelly, NASA flight engineer were then greeted by the three current crew of the ISS.

The crew of the ISS opened the hatch on their side . Images: NASA

Then Soyuz crew entered

First handshakes

Mikhail Kornienko, 54, and Scott Kelly, 51 years will stay 342 days aboard the ISS, the longest uninterrupted period in the Station performed by astronauts from the commissioned its first habitable module 2000. The two men have already made every six months missions in the station, the current standard period of crew rotations.

This mission aims to collect biomedical data to “prepare the long term manned missions in space”, while the United States is considering to send astronauts to Mars in the year 2030. “We will obtain new data on the effects of long-term space flight on the human body,” said the head of NASA, Charles Bolden.

The two crews duplex with Earth

At the end of this mission, Scott Kelly will become the American who remained longer in orbit without interruption. “I hope it will not be too hard and that we can continue to live and work in space for longer periods,” he explained in January, at the time of submission of its mission.

Mikhail Kornienko had for its part said that “the flowing water and in which you can swim, not as bubbles floating in space, is one of the things that are the most ( him) missed “aboard the ISS. The record for the longest stay in orbit is held by Russian Valeri Polyakov, remained 14 consecutive months aboard the space station Mir in 1994-95.