The Soyuz arrived at the station

Three new crew members arrived aboard the Soyuz, which will double the permanent manpower on the space station to six for the first time

Three new crew members arrived at the International Space Station on Friday at 08:34 EST (15:34 Israel time). After the launch from Kazakhstan on Wednesday, the three crew members - Roman Romanenko, Robert Thirsk of Canada and Belgian Franck de Veen spent two days aboard the Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft, before docking in the space station's Zarya module.

The members of the station's 19th crew: Commander Gennady Padalka, and flight engineers Koichi Wakata from Japan and Mike Barratt from the USA awaited the arrivals. About an hour and a quarter after the meeting, the hatches between the Soyuz and the Hazaria were opened. From this moment on, the entire team becomes the station's 20th team. After logging in, there will be a briefing for the new team members.

The 20th team is the first in which all five partner space agencies are represented on the International Space Station: NASA, the Russian Federal Space Agency, the Japanese Space Agency, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. As mentioned, Russia has double representation in the current team, but soon for the first time an astronaut from the European Space Agency is expected to command the station, a task that until now has been carried out alternately by Americans and Russians.