The three astronauts took off tonight from the Baikonur Space Center and will arrive at the station on Friday
A new trio arrived at the International Space Station after being launched this evening (Wednesday) from the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan at 21:09 Israel time.
Dimitri Kondratiev, Catherine Coleman and Paolo Nespoli are currently aboard the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft making their way to dock with the International Space Station. They are expected to dock at the station at the Russian module Rasvet on Friday evening. After the opening of the airlock, the crew members will participate in the traditional welcome ceremony, talk with their family and senior space agency officials on the ground and go through the station's safety procedure.
The current occupants of the station - Commander Scott Kelly and Flight Engineers Alexander Cleary and Oleg Kasripuchka have been working and living at the station since October 9. They are supposed to end their mission in March when they land the Soyuz TMA-01M spacecraft on the steppes of Kazakhstan. Immediately after, the three new team members of Team 26 will become members of Team 27, they are expected to remain there until May.
Kondratiev, Coleman and Nespoli stayed at the Cosmonaut Hotel in Bikaner for about weeks in preparation for the flight. Before that, they trained in Star City near Moscow and participated in official events as well as met with senior officials of the Russian space program.
The next visitors to the station will be crew members of the shuttle Discovery on mission STS-133 who will install a new logistics carrier and storage component.
During his time on the station Kelly will send some of the pictures he took of the Earth to Twitter for a geography trivia quiz.
