Spacecraft
carrying Russian, American, Briton docks with space station
Send a link to a friend
[December 16, 2015]
BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - A
Soyuz spacecraft successfully delivered a Russian, an American and a
Briton to the International Space Station on Tuesday after blasting off
from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
|
The otherwise smooth journey ended with a slightly delayed docking
at 1733 GMT as Russian commander Yuri Malenchenko aborted the
automatic procedure and manually guided the spacecraft towards the
station.
Alongside Malenchenko, a veteran of long-duration space flights who
is on his fourth space mission, were NASA astronaut Tim Kopra and
Briton Tim Peake, both former Apache military helicopter pilots.
Peake, 43, a former army major who is on a six-month mission for the
European Space Agency (ESA), became the first astronaut representing
the British government and wearing a Union Jack flag on his arm. The
first Briton in space was Helen Sharman, who travelled on a Soviet
spacecraft for eight days in 1991.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Dec/16/images/ads/current/christian_church_sda_christmas_2015.png) Peake smiled cheerfully and looked confident as he prepared to board
the spacecraft earlier on Tuesday. He was seen off by his family
after going through all the Baikonur pre-launch rituals, such as
signing his hotel door and receiving a blessing from an Orthodox
priest.
Most of these traditions, such as watching "White Sun of the
Desert", a 1970 Soviet action film, on the eve of a launch, date
back to the early years of space exploration. Even the launch pad
used for manned flights has remained the same since Yuri Gagarin's
first mission in 1961.
[to top of second column] |
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Dec/16/images/ads/current/moriearty_lda_christmas_2015.png)
Peake's mission, called Principia after Isaac Newton's seminal work,
includes a number of scientific experiments, such as testing the use
of nitric oxide gas as a tool to monitor lung inflammation.
Malenchenko, Kopra and Peake are set to return to Earth on June 5
next year.
(Reporting by Shamil Zhumatov, additional repoting and writing by
Olzhas Auyezov in Almaty; Editing by Dmitry Solovyov and Mark
Trevelyan, editing by Larry King)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Dec/16/images/ads/current/primp_hair_sda_christmas_2015.png) |