The International Space Station (ISS) just received three new crew members last Nov. 19 with the arrival of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
Cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy of the Russian Space Agency, astronauts Peggy Whitson of NASA and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency (ESA) successfully arrived at ISS at exactly 4:58 P.M. EST.
Schedules on the engagement
The hatches that link the Soyuz and the ISS was scheduled to open at 7:35 P.M. EST. Footage of their first meeting can be viewed online at Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV, with multiple coverages concerning anything space, starting at 6:45 P.M. EST. The linkup, 260 miles above Earth, took place just two days after the crew lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Nov. 17.
Expedition-50
Novitskiy, Pesquet, and Winston are joining the Expedition-50 crew led by NASA commander Shane Kimbrough. The crew also include flight engineers Andrei Borisenko and Sergey Ryzhikov of Roscosmos, who arrived at the space station just last month.
The six crewmembers will be staffing the orbiting lab through February, conducting hundreds of experiments and studies in biology, biotechnology, Earth science, and physical science.
Additionally, two more crewmates, Mark Vande of NASA and Alexander Misurkin of Roscosmos, will be joining Expedition 50 from March to May.
Scheduled tasks
In addition to their scientific tasks, the crewmembers are also scheduled to receive three cargo deliveries of several tons of food, fuel, supplies and research materials, as well as new lithium ion batteries to be replacing the nickel-hydrogen batteries that is currently used on the space station. This is to store electrical energy which is generated by its four large solar arrays. The batteries will be installed during a series of spacewalks that is scheduled in January 2017.
