Avi Blizovsky
In the photo: The Russian spacecraft on its way to dock with the space station, last Friday, November 1, 2002
The Russian spacecraft that carried two Russian cosmonauts
And a Belgian astronaut docked at the International Space Station on Friday. This is two days after her departure from Kazakhstan.
The Soyuz TMA-1 spacecraft was piloted by an autopilot and steered itself to docking. It was launched on a Soyuz FG rocket from Baikonur on Wednesday morning.
The three, Sergey Zlatin, Yuri Luntsakov and the Belgian Frank de Wien, will return to Israel in another Soyuz spacecraft and will leave the spacecraft with which they arrived as an escape vehicle at the space station.
The successful launch came just two weeks after a similar, but unmanned, missile exploded and its fragments flew over a launch facility in northern Russia. Russia suspects that this is an attack and therefore increased the security measures on the manned spacecraft. This is a special flight and we are seriously preparing for it, said a spokesman for the Russian space agency.
The new Soyuz model will allow taller people (height 2 m and weight up to one hundred kilograms compared to height: 185 cm, weight 74 kg in the previous models) to take off into space. "The new spacecraft will be comfortable even for space tourists." The spokesman added. Indeed, the two space tourists - the American Dennis Tito and the South African Mark Athelworth have already flown in Russian spacecraft to the International Space Station for 20 million dollars. This flight was also supposed to be joined by the singer of Laken En-Sync, Lance Beys, but he was replaced by Lonkchev after his financiers fell behind on payments.
The space station crew includes American commander Peggy Whitson and two Russian crew members who have been manning the facility since July. They are scheduled to return to Earth later this month on the Russian space shuttle Endeavour, which will bring replacements.
This shuttle flight will be the last before the flight of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon. Ramon will not fly to the launch station but will circle the earth in the space shuttle for 16 days. Currently the flight date is January 16.
The space station celebrates two years of manning
The NASA website announced this weekend that the International Space Station is celebrating two years of being fully manned by the first crew.
On November 2, 2000. These two years were years of warfare and space research. "Our success in two years has been phenomenal," said Bill Gerstenmeier, program manager for NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
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