NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and two Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station on April 9, bringing its number of residents to 10 for the coming week.
The Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft carrying Vande Hei and cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos docked to the stationâs Rassvet module at 6:05 a.m. Docking occurred two orbits and about three hours after a 2:42 a.m. launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Vande Hei, Novitskiy, and Dubrov would join the Expedition 64 crew when hatches open about 9 a.m. Expedition 65, with NASA astronaut Shannon Walker as commander, would begin April 16, upon the departure of NASAâs Kate Rubins, Roscosmosâ Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, and departing station commander Sergey Ryzhikov. The trio would land in Kazakhstan following a six-month stay aboard the orbiting laboratory.