Posted: Fri, Mar 29, 2013, 7:28 AM ET (1128 GMT)
A Soyuz spacecraft carrying three new International Space Station crew members docked with the station Thursday night, just six hours after launching from Baikonur. The Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft docked with the Poisk module of the station at 10:28 pm EDT Thursday (0228 GMT Friday), five hours and 45 minutes after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Hatches separating the Soyuz and station opened about two hours after docking. The Soyuz brought to the station NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin, joining the three people already on the station. The Soyuz flight was the first accelerated trip to the ISS for a crewed mission; previously, Soyuz missions took about two days after launch to rendezvous with the station.
