Expedition 47 crew reaches the International Space Station

A Russian Soyuz rocket successfully sent three astronauts on Expedition-47 six-hour trip to the International Space Station (ISS)

Image Credit: NASA

Cape Canaveral: A Russian Soyuz rocket successfully sent three astronauts on Expedition-47 six-hour trip to the International Space Station (ISS) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Saturday March 19.

NASA astronaut Jeff Williams, Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripka of the Russian space agency Roscosmos the other three astronauts aboard the Internation Space Station will gather to participate in Earth observations and conduct the key research to advance knowledge and demonstrate new technologies.

All three have Astronaunt took off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 17:26 EDT (2126 GMT) and arrived at the space station at 23:09 EDT (0309 GMT).

They replace a team that finished with a flight of almost a year earlier this month.

The other three astronauts currently living in the international space lab in orbit are Timothy Kopra, Timothy Peake and Yuri Malenchenko.

Jeff Williams said he has been in space with 45 different people over the years. He Skripochka, who has flown once before, and Ovchinin, a rookie, will spend six months living and working aboard the station, a research laboratory of $ 100 million that flies about 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth.

The US space agency and Russia have not yet assigned crews additional missions around the year following the March 1 Back astronaut Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko cosmonaut space flight of 340 days.

Williams, 58, who will serve aboard the station for the third time, is expected to return to Earth with a career total of 534 days in space. This would surpass the current record US, which is Kelly`s accumulated 520 days.

The world record belongs to Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, who returned from his fifth flight last September and has spent a total of 879 days in space.

"I feel very ready to return to the space station," Williams said in an interview before the launch of NASA.

Scientists are interested in seeing how the human body rates during long stays in space as the United States and other countries are planning for missions to Mars several years.

In addition to increased radiation exposure, astronauts experience bone and muscle loss and changes in the cardiovascular, immune and other systems.

Williams, Skripochka and Ovchinin join a team of three men already aboard the station. The crew has been preparing for the arrival of a cargo ship orbital ATK, which is scheduled to take off from Florida on Tuesday.