A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying three new crew members for the international space station successfully docked with the orbital outpost Oct. 25, NASA reported.
The Soyuz TMA-06 capsule was launched by a Soyuz rocket Oct. 23 from the Russian-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Its Expedition 33-34 crew consisted of NASA astronaut Kevin Ford and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgney Tarelkin.
The new arrivals join three Expedition 33 crew members who have been aboard the space station since July 17: commander Suni Williams and flight engineers Aki Hoshide and Yuri Malenchenko.
The six-person Expedition 33 crew will remain aboard station until Nov. 12 when Williams, Hoshide and Malenchenko are slated to depart aboard the Soyuz TMA-05 capsule in which they arrived. Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin will then officially begin the Expedition 34 mission, with the U.S. astronaut serving as commander.
They will be joined in December by Chris Hadfield, Tom Marshburn and Roman Romanenko to round out the Expedition 34 crew.
