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New crew docks at space station

An Expedition 30 crew member aboard the International Space Station took this nighttime photograph of much of the Atlantic coast of the United States on February 6, 2012. Large metropolitan areas and other easily recognizable sites from the Virginia/Maryland/Washington, D.C. area are visible in the image that spans almost to Rhode Island. Boston is just out of frame at right. Long Island and the New York City area are visible in the lower right quadrant. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are near the center. Parts of two Russian vehicles parked at the orbital outpost are seen in left foreground. UPI/NASA
An Expedition 30 crew member aboard the International Space Station took this nighttime photograph of much of the Atlantic coast of the United States on February 6, 2012. Large metropolitan areas and other easily recognizable sites from the Virginia/Maryland/Washington, D.C. area are visible in the image that spans almost to Rhode Island. Boston is just out of frame at right. Long Island and the New York City area are visible in the lower right quadrant. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are near the center. Parts of two Russian vehicles parked at the orbital outpost are seen in left foreground. UPI/NASA
MOSCOW, March 29 (UPI) — A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying new crew members to the International Space Station docked with the station as scheduled late Thursday, officials said.

“The docking was held by command from Earth at the designated time, in automatic regime,” a spokesman for the Russian space agency Roscosmos told RIA Novosti.

The spacecraft reached the space station just 6 hours after its launch from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan, using a series of ballistic maneuvers to shorten the normal two to three days necessary to reach the ISS.

NASA officials had called the shortened trip an “express” mission, noting it was the first time the technique had been used on a manned mission after it was successfully tested with three unmanned Russian Progress cargo supply missions to the ISS..

The newly arrived crew members, cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin and astronaut Christopher Cassidy, join Roman Romanenko of Russia, Chris Hadfield of Canada and Thomas Marshburn of the United States.

The crew will conduct science investigations, dock and unload five supply spacecraft, and conduct four spacewalks during the next six months, Roscosmos said.

Copyright 2013 United Press International, Inc. (UPI).

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