Expedition 31 crew members Gennady Padalka, Joe Acaba and Sergei Revin were welcomed aboard the International Space Station after the hatches opened Thursday at 4:10 a.m. EDT. They docked to the Poisk module at 12:36 a.m. after a two day journey that began in Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz TMA-04M spacecraft.
The Soyuz TMA-04M that launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on May 15 carrying cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin and astronaut Joe Acaba successfully docked with the International Space Station Poisk module on May 17.
After joining ISS residents Oleg Kononenko, Don Pettit, and Andre Kuipers for a welcome ceremony, the new crew will begin familiarizing themselves with the station. They will need to get up to speed quickly, since delays in their launch have reduced their stay to126 days.
The next few months are expected to be very busy, starting with the May 19 docking of the SpaceX Dragon capsule, the first commercial cargo vessel to attempt to dock with the ISS. Unlike the automated Soyuz docking, the Dragon will be manually grappled to the ESA Columbus /Harmony node using the robotic Canadarm2.
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