Soyuz delivers team of 3 to space station

The new six-member Expedition 41 crew, comprising American, Russian and European astronauts and cosmonauts gathers in the Zvezda service module on the International Space Station for a welcoming ceremony, Sept. 26, 2014. NASA TV

Looking like a wounded bird with only one of its two solar wings deployed, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft glided to an otherwise picture-perfect docking with the International Space Station late Thursday, boosting the lab's crew back to six with the addition of a veteran cosmonaut, a NASA shuttle flier and the first female cosmonaut to win a station berth.

With commander Alexander Samokutyaev at the controls, flanked on the left by board engineer Elena Serova and on the right by Barry "Butch" Wilmore, the Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft engaged the docking mechanism on the station's upper Poisk module at 10:11 p.m. EDT (GMT-4) as the two spacecraft sailed 260 miles above the Pacific Ocean approaching the coast of Ecuador.

"Contact and capture confirmed," someone said over a translated Russian audio loop. "Congratulations."

The linkup came six hours -- four orbits -- after a sky-lighting launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The eight-minute 45-second climb to space went smoothly, but only one of the Soyuz's two solar panels unfolded after the ship reached orbit.

The Soyuz TMA-14M rocket is launched with Expedition 41 Soyuz Commander Alexander Samokutyaev of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) Flight Engineer Elena Serova of Roscosmos, and Flight Engineer Barry "Butch" Wilmore of NASA, Sept. 26, 2014, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

NASA

A little more than a half hour after docking, perhaps helped along by the slight jarring of impact or the extreme temperature swings spacecraft experience in orbit -- or both -- the stuck left-side solar array suddenly popped free, easing any concerns about the ship's return to Earth next March.

"It's fully deployed, and it's as beautiful as they come," Samokutyaev reported in a translated call to Russian flight controllers.

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Soyuz delivers team of 3 to space station