ISS astronauts welcome three new crew members at space station!

Photo Credit: NASA

New Delhi: The NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko of the Russian space agency Roscosmos on Friday have finally arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) as three new crew members.

According to NASA, Soyuz MS-02 spacecraft docked with the station’s Poisk module at 5:52 a.m. EDT. At the time of docking, the space station and Soyuz were flying 251 miles over southern Russia.

As per reports, the hatches on the space station and Soyuz MS-02 were opened at 8:20 a.m. EDT, marking the arrival to the orbiting laboratory for the new crew members.

The three joined their fellow astronauts, Expedition 49 Commander Anatoly Ivanishin of Roscosmos and Flight Engineers Kate Rubins of NASA and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, who have been aboard the space station since July this year.

The new crew will spend a little more than four months together aboard the space station, returning to Earth in late February.

The crew members will contribute to more than 250 research experiments ongoing aboard the space station in diverse fields such as biology, Earth Science, human research, physical sciences and technology development.

Watch the video: 

The station has expanded to six Expedition 49 crew members after the opening of the hatches between the Soyuz and the station. pic.twitter.com/i7VihivF4k — Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) October 21, 2016