14 DAY TRIAL // The three astronauts that launched on Sunday from Kazakhstan managed to hook up to the International Space Station (ISS) last night, at 5:48 pm EST (2248 GMT). NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi were pleased to finally meet up with the rest of the crew making up Expedition 22. Already in orbit were ISS Commander Jeff Williams, and Russian flight engineer Maxim Suraev, who spent almost an entire month all by themselves in low-Earth orbit.
The Soyuz TMA-17 space capsule, which took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Sunday evening, managed to dock flawlessly to its Earth-facing port, on the Zarya module. The docking preparations were completed relatively fast, and the hatch between the two spacecraft was opened at around 7:30 pm (EST). The three new crew members are all flight engineers, but one of them, a Russian cosmonaut, is scheduled to take over the control of the station in March 2010, as the leader of Expedition 23. Williams and Suraev, who were already aboard the station, have been on the international facility since Oct 2, 2009, when they flew there aboard the Soyuz TMA-16 space capsule.
“We look forward to having five crew members back on space station, and we look forward to plenty of activities and experiments. To get these vehicles ready to go fly and to do the activities that you did this year is a tremendous accomplishment. My congratulations to you,” Bill Gerstenmaier said in Moscow during a post-doc news conference. He is the associate administrator for space operations at the American space agency, NASA. He was talking about officials from the Russian Federal Space Agency and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), who managed to create space programs able to fully support the ISS.
During its mission, Expedition 22 will have a lot on its plate, including two space-shuttle visits, of which one will carry up a new module for the space station. Furthermore, a number of additional, unmanned spacecraft are scheduled to dock on the ISS as well. This won't be a problem for Russian-built Soyuz and Progress capsules, as the station now has four docking ports for these types of spacecraft. Two of these ports are occupied by the Soyuz lifeboats, which remain there at all times.
“Really it's going to be [a] very tense mission for us. We're going to work with two shuttle crews, one of them bringing up the new module,” Kotov said in a preflight interview about the challenges ahead for Expedition 22. “Believe me, it's really exciting and I'm really looking forward to it,” he added. Oleg Kotov will be the next commander of the ISS, during Expedition 23. The most important additions to the laboratory will be the Node 3 (Tranquility) module, and the 360-degree Cupola, which will make it easier for astronauts to work with the robotic arms.