Three new astronauts have safely landed aboard the International Space Station (ISS), joining Expedition 36 as the first groups to reach the orbiting station in less than a day.
The American and two Russians were welcomed aboard as the hatches between the Soyuz spacecraft and the ISS opened at 12:14 a.m. EDT following a 4:31 p.m. EDT launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
"Thank you for the excellent space work," an unidentified woman from Mission Control Moscow told the astronauts after the docking. "My congratulations to all of you... It's not just us. It's all of us. You're the ones in the frontier."
The flight itself only took six hours, the quickest of its kind. The feat was achieved by traveling a different, more difficult path to the ISS. Despite the incredibly precise orbital measurements needed, space agencies opted for the route so that the astronauts would not be cramped in the Soyuz capsule for too long.
NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano will join existing Expedition 36 crew members over the next few months, before transitioning into Expedition 37. NASA Flight Engineer Chris Cassidy of NASA, and Russian Federal Space Agency Commander Pavel Vinogradov and Flight Engineer Alexander Misurkin - all who arrived at the ISS back on March 28 - will take off in September and be replaced by three more astronauts. Nyberg, Yurchikhin, and Parmitano will finally return to Earth in November.
During this 5 1/2-month period, Commander Yurchikhin will take over in September as leader of Expedition 37. The teams will conduct a total of six spacewalks - five to install the Russian Multipurpose Laboratory Module, and one to carry the Olympic Torch outside.
The Expedition members will be carrying out a number of experiments onboard concerning topics varying from osteoporosis to fuels and combustion.
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