MC with AFP

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With two months late because of the dramatic loss of the cargo spacecraft Progress, three astronauts arrived Thursday aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Party from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 11:02 p.m., French time, the Soyuz carrying cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, American astronaut Kjell Lindgren and Japanese Kimiya Yui, docked with the ISS at 4:46 French time, according to images the NASA TV.

“We have made contact,” said a NASA presenter while the spacecraft maneuvered some 402 kilometers above the Pacific. One of the solar panels of the ship has not deployed on time but this did not affect the rocket because other panels were operational, said the US space agency.

When the door connecting the Soyuz to the ISS was opened, cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko was the first to enter the station.

This flight was highly anticipated after last April launch failure of a Progress cargo ship, forcing Russian officials to postpone the departure of three astronauts to the ISS, originally scheduled end of May. The cargo ship had lost control with the Earth and burned in the atmosphere, because of a failure of the launcher, according to Russian authorities. This failure had forced a group of three astronauts to extend by one month stay aboard the ISS before they finally return to Earth on June 11.

The Russian space sector, which historically the pride of the country, experienced a humiliating series of setbacks in recent months, including the loss of expensive satellites and ships. During their stay on the ISS, the three astronauts will perform several scientific experiments, especially those aimed at controlling robots remotely.

They’ll find aboard the station the Russians Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Kornienko and NASA astronaut Scott Kelly. For his part, Oleg Kononenko promised to study particular “behavior of soap bubbles” to meet the demand of young lovers of space.

Russia supplies to the ISS’s main module where rocket engines are located, and the Russian Soyuz ships are the only way to route and repatriate crew of the space station since the US space shuttles stop.

Sixteen countries participate to the ISS, outpost and space laboratory into orbit in 1998 having cost a total of $ 100 billion, financed for the most part by Russia and the United States.