NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub have arrived safely on the Worldwide Area Station (ISS) aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
The trio blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 11:44 a.m. ET (8:44 a.m. PT) on Friday, September 15, reaching the orbital outpost 250 miles above Earth simply three hours later.
After docking and coming into the area station via the hatch, the brand new arrivals have been greeted by the seven inhabitants at the moment aboard the power. A short time later, the Worldwide Area Station’s official social media account posted a photograph (beneath) of the total crew of 10 inhabitants, with O’Hara seen on the far proper of the picture.
Texas-born O’Hara is on her first orbital mission and can spend the following six months dwelling and dealing aboard the ISS, whereas her two Russian colleagues will keep aboard the station for a complete yr.
It’s a busy time for the ISS when it comes to crew rotation. On the finish of final month it welcomed SpaceX’s 4 Crew-7 astronauts earlier than bidding farewell to the 4 Crew-6 astronauts. And simply over every week from now, NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin will return to Earth aboard one other Soyuz spacecraft on the finish of a keep that may see Rubio set a brand new file for the size of time spent in orbit by a NASA astronaut at 371 days.
Rubio’s mission was solely alleged to final six months however was prolonged after his Soyuz spacecraft suffered a coolant leak on the finish of final yr whereas docked on the area station. Roscosmos deemed the broken spacecraft too dangerous for crewed flight, prompting it to reschedule Rubio’s return flight whereas it organized a alternative capsule.
Actually, O’Hara and her two Russian colleagues have been alleged to fly to the station six months in the past, however the fallout from the rescheduling noticed their mission delayed till now.
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