A spaceship carrying a new US-Russian crew and an Italian astronaut docked early Sunday at the international space station, launching a mission that is slated to welcome the first space shuttle flight in two years.
The Soyuz space ship locked onto the station at 6:20am. The three cosmonauts who blasted off Friday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan -- Russian Sergei Krikalev, American John Phillips and Italian Roberto Vittori from the European Space Agency -- floated into the station about three hours later to joyful embraces from the two men who have manned the orbiting outpost for the last six months.
Cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov and US astronaut Leroy Chiao were due to return to Earth along with Vittori on April 25. Sharipov presented the new arrivals with the traditional Russian welcome offering of bread and salt; later, presumably, they would dig into the fresh produce ferried by the incoming crew and the Italian fare Vittori had brought to spice up the space diet.
"We are very happy to see the new crew arrive and we wish them an excellent mission," Sharipov said over a video linkup with Russian Mission Control in Korolyov, outside Moscow.
Earlier, before dawn broke over the Russian capital, space engineers had monitored the docking via a video feed from a camera affixed to the Soyuz TMA-6 spaceship, which tracked the vessel's slow final approach. They broke into applause when they saw that the automatic parking system had operated flawlessly.
"We successfully launched the new, permanent Expedition 11," the deputy director of Russia's Federal Space Agency, Nikolai Moiseyev, told reporters.
A dozen men in colorful Italian military uniforms were on hand to mark Vittori's arrival at the station, and an Italian flag was draped over a balcony overlooking the monitoring hall.
Fred Gregory, deputy administrator of the US space agency NASA, congratulated Russian space officials on "a very successful launch and docking operation conducted in a very professional way."
He said that the resumption of US space shuttle flights was on schedule.
"The return to flight activities for the shuttle appears to be on time," Gregory said. "We are hopeful that we'll be able to launch within the first window," which he said was May 15-June 3.
The shuttle program has been suspended for two years, with the Russian Soyuz capsule -- which weighs only 7 tonnes -- being the only means of getting astronauts to the station since Columbia disintegrated as it returned to Earth on Feb. 1, 2003. Russian cargo ships alone have delivered fresh supplies during the interim.
A key task for Krikalev and Phillips will be to observe the condition of the insulating tiles as the Discovery approaches the station, conducting a photo survey of the exterior of the shuttle while it is maneuvering prior to docking.
Following tradition, the crewmen will also conduct scientific experiments, about 70 percent of them devoted to medical research, said Vladimir Solovyov, Mission Control chief.
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