TMA-16 to Dock on the ISS Today

In only a couple of hours, the two professional astronauts and the space tourist aboard the Russian-built Soyuz TMA-16 capsule are scheduled to dock to the International Space Station (ISS). The link-up is estimated to take place at 4:37 am EDT (0837 GMT), and will see two new Expedition 21 crew members brought aboard the orbital facility. They will replace the current ISS Commander, Gennady Padalka, and NASA flight engineer Michael Barratt, who have both come to the end of their six-month stay on the outpost. NASA astronaut Jeffrey Williams and Russian cosmonaut Maxim Suraev, who are now on TMA-16, will, in turn, remain on the ISS for six months, Space reports.

Traveling with them is Canadian billionaire Guy Laliberte, who made a name for himself as the founder of the world-famous circus troupe Cirque du Soleil. He will spend ten days aboard the orbital lab, before returning back to Earth with Padalka and Barratt, aboard the Soyuz TMA-14 capsule. During his space stay, Laliberte will conduct a series of actions meant to raise awareness on the world's poorest people, who have no access to clean water. He is the founder of the ONE DROP non-profit organization, one that aims to fight poverty by ensuring access to clean water for the poorest populations on the planet.

“When I founded ONE DROP, it was (or rather, it still is) desperately urgent to do something to protect water. ONE DROP is already acting in practical terms, but in the project of going into space, I saw an innovative opportunity, reflecting the image of Cirque du Soleil and my own image, too,” the businessman wrote before Wednesday's launch on his blog at OneDrop.org. His actions on the ISS will culminate in an October 9 performance, in which he will recite a poetic story about water. In the meantime, he will be distributing red clown noses among station astronauts.

With TMA-16's docking today, three Soyuz capsules will be attached to the ISS at the same time, a feat that has never before been achieved. If the craft arrived a few days earlier, it would have also seen the latest Progress capsule, which was deorbited a short while back and burned up in the upper atmosphere, over the Pacific Ocean. Also on the space station is the Japanese Space Agency's (JAXA) new H-2 Transfer Vehicle (HTV-1) unmanned cargo spacecraft, launched in late September.