The Soyuz spacecraft, with on board an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts launched on Friday, March 27 from Baikonur , docked early Saturday to the International Space Station (ISS), where two of the three occupants of the vessel began a mission without precedent for a year.
The Soyuz-TMA16M took off as scheduled at 19 42 hours GMT from the Baikonur in Kazakhstan on a flight without a 5:51 minute problem to reach the orbital outpost and tie it at 1 hour 33 GMT, said a commentator on NASA TV, which broadcast Direct maneuver. The hatch between the Soyuz and the Station will be open within 1 hour 45, the time to check that there are no leaks.
Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Kornienko, and American astronaut Scott Kelly, NASA Flight Engineer, will be welcomed by the three current crew of the ISS. This is American Terry Virts, the current captain, Russian Anton Shkaplerov and the Italian Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency (ESA). Terry Virts and his Italian colleague should return to Earth in May.
Mikhail Kornienko, 54, and Scott Kelly, 51, will stay for 342 days on board 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 all six months of missions to the station, the current standard period of crew rotations.
According to NASA, this new mission is to “collect biomedical data to prepare long-term manned missions in space” . Scott Kelly will become even American remained longer in the seamless space. “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 presentation of its mission.
Mikhail Kornienko had for its part said that “flowing water and in which you can swim, not in the form of bubbles floating in space, is one of the things that are most [him] missed “ on board the ISS. The record for the longest stay in orbit is held by Russian Valeri Polyakov, remained fourteen consecutive months aboard the space station Mir in 1994/1995.
The Russian-American research mission that will conduct these two scientists also has a high symbolic value, while in Ukraine because of conflict relations between the United States and Russia are at their lowest since the end of the Cold War in 1991.
Since its orbit in 1998, the ISS has been largely financed by Russia and the United States, each country largely dependent on the other, and space cooperation remains one of the few areas in which their agreement remains intact.
In video, a previous mission Soyuz to the ISS in 2014:
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