News
December 23, 2011.
Soyuz TMA-03M has delivered a crew complement to ISS. A crew of six is going to see the New Year in onboard the space station!
Russian manned transportation spacecraft Soyuz TMA-03M has docked with the International Space Station (ISS) after two days of free flight in low Earth orbit.
Rendezvous with the space station, its fly-around, stationkeeping and docking were performed in automatic mode.
The initial contact with the docking port on the research module Rassvet of the Russian segment of the space station occurred at 07:19 PM Moscow Time.
The final flight operations in the course of the spacecraft rendezvous and docking with the space station were supervised by the State Commission (the Chairman of the State Commission is the head of the Federal Space Agency V.A. Popovkin) and the Technical Management for flight tests of manned space systems (the Technical Manager is the RSC Energia President and General Designer V.A. Lopota).
After a leak test of the Soyuz TMA-03M compartments and the docking tunnel, and equalization of pressure in the space station and the spacecraft, the transfer hatches were opened. The spacecraft crew transferred to the Russian Segment of the ISS.
A joint international ISS-30 crew of six began its work on-board
the space station. The crew includes: Roskosmos cosmonauts A. Shkaplerov,
A. Ivanishin, O. Kononenko,
NASA astronauts D. Burbank
and D. Pettit, and
an ESA astronaut A. Kuipers.
On-board systems of the ISS, and spacecraft Progress M-13M, Soyuz TMA-03M, Soyuz TMA-22 operate normally.
The Mission Control Center near Moscow (MCC-M), from where the spacecraft rendezvous and docking with the ISS were controlled, held a press conference for journalists of the Russian and foreign mass media, and also conducted the first communications session with the space station crew.
For information:
- RSC Energia is the prime organization for developing and operating the ISS Russian segment, its modules and spacecraft Soyuz TMA and Progress M.
- Working at present within ISS are 5 Russian-made modules (Zarya,
Zvezda, Pirs,
Poisk, Rassvet) and 3 Russian transportation spacecraft.
- Mission control for the ISS Russian Segment and the spacecraft is provided by the Lead Operations Control Team (LOCT) of MCC-M under the direction of the first deputy general designer of RSC Energia V.A. Soloviev.
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