* Space station now back at full staff of six
* Crew to prep station for commercial cargo ships
* First commercial cargo ship to arrive in February
By Irene Klotz
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Dec 23 (Reuters) – A Russian Soyuz
capsule arrived at the International Space Station on
Friday with a trio of astronauts, bringing the orbital
outpost back to full staffing after a failed cargo ship launch
in August disrupted flight schedules.
Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA’s Don Pettit and the
European Space Agency’s Andre Kuipers blasted off from the
Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday for the space
station, a $100 billion research complex that orbits about 240
miles above Earth.
Their two-day trip in the cramped capsule ended at 10:19
a.m. EST (1519 GMT) when the Soyuz slipped into the
Earth-facing docking port on the station’s Rassvet module.
“The Soyuz flies down the chimney of the International Space
Station with an early Christmas present for the crew – a return
to a steady-state six-person capability,” said NASA mission
commentator Rob Navias during a televised broadcast of the
docking.
Continued…
