ROSCOSMOS - Soyuz TMA-11M Mission patch.
Nov. 7, 2013
A new trio of Expedition 38 flight engineers docked to the Rassvet docking compartment at 5:27 a.m. Thursday. They lifted off about six hours earlier from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, at 11:14 p.m. EST Tuesday aboard a Soyuz TMA-11M spacecraft.
Image above: The Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft with Earth in the background is just moments away from docking to the Rassvet module. Image Credit: NASA TV.
They will open the Soyuz and station hatches in a couple of hours to be greeted by six station crew members. New station crew members Mikhail Tyurin, Koichi Wakata and Rick Mastracchio will join Expedition 37 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineers Karen Nyberg, Luca Parmitano, Oleg Kotov, Mike Hopkins and Sergey Ryazanskiy.
This will be the first time since October 2009 that nine people have resided on the station without the presence of a space shuttle. However, just four days later the station residents will say goodbye to Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano, all Expedition 37 crew members, when they undock in the Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft and land in Kazakhstan about 3-1/2 hours later.
Soyuz hooks up to the station
When the Expedition 37 trio returns home this Sunday they will have completed a 5-1/2 month stay in space. The station's newest Expedition 38 trio will live and work in space until May 2014.
New Crew Arrives at Space Station
Expedition 38 officially begins when the home-bound trio undocks. Kotov will become station commander for the second time since Expedition 23 in 2010. Staying behind are veteran station residents Mikhail Tyurin and Koichi Wakata; Rick Mastracchio, a veteran of three shuttle missions; and Mike Hopkins and Sergey Ryazanskiy, who are both on their first missions.
International Space Station (ISS). Image Credit: NASA
All nine crew members will participate in a joint crew news conference Friday Nov. 8 at 8:50 a.m. during their very busy four days together. The crew will talk about the upcoming 15th anniversary of the space station's construction (the station has been continuously occupied for 13 years).
Read about the joint crew news conference: http://www.nasa.gov/press/2013/november/three-space-station-crews-answer-media-questions-from-orbit/
For more information about the International Space Station (ISS), visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition36/gallery.html
Images (mentioned), Videos, Text, Credits: NASA / NASA TV.
Greetings, Orbiter.ch
