The Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft blasts off from the Russian leased Kazakhstan’s Baikonur cosmodrome early Friday. A Russian rocket carrying an international crew of US astronaut Christopher Cassidy together with Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin blasted off Friday without a hitch to the International Space Station (ISS). — AFP

MOSCOW — A new Russian-American crew arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) Friday after a fast-track trip from Earth of under six hours, the swiftest ever manned journey to the orbiting laboratory. A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts opened the hatches of their Soyuz-TMA spaceship and floated into the ISS to a warm welcome from the three incumbent crew, live pictures broadcast on Russian television showed.



Russia’s Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin and American Chris Cassidy are now expected to spend the next five months aboard the station after their hitch-free launch and docking. Their record-breaking trip from blast-off at Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to docking with the ISS lasted less than six hours. Previously, trips to the ISS had taken over two full days as spaceships orbited the Earth 30 times before docking with the space station. However, under a new technique now employed by the Russian space agency with the help of new technology, the Soyuz capsule this time only orbited Earth four times before docking.



After blast-off at 2043 GMT Thursday, the Soyuz capsule docked with the ISS at 0228 GMT with the hatches opening just over two hours later. The quick journey — dubbed by NASA’s official television commentator as a “chase into space” — has been made possible by launching the Soyuz just after the ISS passes overhead in orbit.



The successful fast-track voyage is a huge boost for the embattled Russian space program, whose reputation has been battered by several failed satellite launches in the last year. There have been no problems to date with the manned spaceflight program. The three spacemen are joining incumbent crew of station commander Chris Hadfield of Canada, Tom Marshburn of NASA and Russia’s Roman Romanenko. — AFP