The tri-nation crew space crew composed of cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy and astronauts Peggy Whitson (US) and Thomas Pesquet (France) arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) for a six-month stay to conduct a series of far-reaching experiments.
According to a report in the Headlines-news, the three-member crew flew on a Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft, which arrived at the space station at 4:58 p.m. EST (2158 GMT), docking their spacecraft to the orbiting laboratory's Rassvet module.
In a report published by Space.com, Whitson of NASA, Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) and Novitskiy of Roscosmos (Russian Federal Space Agency) lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan two days ago.
This tri-nation crew joined three other crew members already aboard the ISS - Commander Shane Kimbrough of NASA, flight engineers Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrei Borisenko of Roscosmos.
The six-member crew will work through February of next year conducting a series of experiments and studies in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science.
Some of the studies to be undertaken include recording the impact of lighting on the overall health and well-being of station crew members, the effect of microgravity environment in orbit on tissue regeneration in humans and the genetic properties of space-grown plants.
Dubbed as Expedition 50, this mission will be memorable for a number of reasons. Among the star performers in this crew is astronaut Whitson.
Whitson will be celebrating her 57th birthday aboard the ISS in February 2017. On completion of her 179-day stint aboard the ISS, she will rewrite several space record books.
She is already the oldest woman to orbit the earth. She will hold the record as the woman with the most time in space. She will also become the American astronaut with the most time in space, 556 days, beating the existing record, 534 days, of astronaut Jeff Williams.
Among the other crew members, the 45-year-old Novitskiy is on his second flight into space, having already spent 144 days on an earlier mission. Pesquet is a 38-year-old rookie on his first spaceflight and the 10thFrenchman to be on a space mission.
The Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft that brought the tri-nation crew is the 49th Soyuz to dock to the ISS.
