* 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
(Updates with Soyuz-2 launch failure, quotes)
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 (385 km) 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 docking occurred about three hours after another botched
Russian launch, the fifth this year.
Continued…
