Soyuz with ISS crew onboard docks successfully with ISS

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS: The manned spaceship Soyuz with the international ISS crew of three astronauts onboard docked at 01.48 a.m. Moscow time on Wednesday with the International Space Station. “The spaceship docked to the docking module Zarya in the automatic mode,” spokesman for the Mission Control Center Valery Lyndin told Itar-Tass on Wednesday. The Soyuz TMA-17, which was launched from the Baikonur spaceport on December 21, brought to the ISS Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, NASA astronaut Timothy Creamer and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi. They will work on the orbit for half a year. Upon arrival of the international trio to the ISS the ISS-22 crew enlarged to five people. The chiefs of Russian and Japanese space agencies, Mission Control Center specialists, journalists and guests applauded loudly to the successful docking. The interest to the flight is great, the press sector and the VIP-zone were packed to capacity. “The astronauts are to open up the hatches and go aboard the ISS at about 03.40 a.m. Moscow time,” the Mission Control Center said. The working program of the ISS-22/23 crew is intensive and diversified. The ISS crewmembers are to receive three shuttles and two freighters Progress, as well as to dock and put into operation the new Russian module Rassvet (MIM-1), which the shuttle will bring to the orbit in May 2010. Alongside, the ISS expedition is to make a spacewalk in the interests of the Russian segment and to redock the Soyuz from one module to another one. The Russian scientific research program numbers about 50 experiments, some of which have not been carried out on the ISS yet. Creamer and Noguchi will conduct several dozens of other experiments on the U.S. segment and the Japanese module Kibo.