NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko of the Russian space agency Roscosmos arrived at the Internationl Space Station (ISS), Oct. 21, after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Oct. 19.
At the time of the launch, the space station flew 252 statute miles over the south Atlantic, east of Brazil, after which it went safely into orbit with the Soyuz MS-02. The spacecraft docked with the station's Poisk module at 5:52 a.m. EDT. The spacecraft orbited the Earth 34 times before docking to the space station.
As the hatches opened at approximately 8:30 a.m. EDT, the members of the crew joined Expedition 49 Commander Anatoly Ivanishin of Roscosmos, along with Flight Engineers Kate Rubins of NASA and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, according to NASA blog.
The new members of this crew will stay on the station until February. During their first couple of days, aside from adapting to microgravity, the Orbital ATK's Cygnus arrived at the station, with more than 5,100 lbs. of supplies. Cygnus also brought a station research facility which enables new classes of research experiments, through a better motion control in the microgravity environment.
"It's kind of like Christmas every time one shows up, because there's a bunch of fresh food and new clothes and new equipment for us to work on," explained Kimbrough back in July.
Soyuz connected with the ISS 251 miles over southern Russia, being the first flight for Ryzhikov, the pilot of the spacecraft. The other two newest members of the ISS crew both have another spaceflight in their work history.
Soyuz is a series of spacecraft created by the Korolyov Design Bureau for the Soviet space program back in the 1960s. The rocket, integrated part of this program, is the most frequently used and also considered to be the most reliable launch vehicle worldwide. All the spacecraft part of Soyuz are generally launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
The Expedition 49 started on Sept. 6. Its crew, already transferred from Expedition 48, will be transferred to Expedition 50 on November 2016.
With the arrival of the newest members, Expedition 49 has become a six-person crew. Their two-day transit involved testing a variety of upgraded systems on the spacecraft. The newest members of the team have thrusters that are fully redundant, micrometeoroid debris shielding, and electrical motors for the docking probe. Along with this, the number of photovoltaic cells on the solar arrays of the spacecraft is also higher than before.
