3 New Crewmembers to Arrive at Space Station Friday

The Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying the three newest residents of the International Space Station is set to dock with the high-flying laboratory on Friday morning (Dec. 21).

Set to arrive at the space station at 9:12 a.m. EST (1412 GMT), the capsule will deliver Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield who will become the station's first Canadian commander as well as Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonaut Roman Romanenko and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn. The spaceflyers' journey started yesterday (Dec. 19) when they launched from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome at 7:12 a.m. EST (1212 GMT).

After they reach the space station, the astronauts will perform leak checks on the seal between their Soyuz TMA-07M capsule and the space station's docking port on the Rassvet module. These checks should take about two hours, clearing the way for the hatches between the two vehicles to be opened at around 11:45 a.m. EST (1645 GMT).

You can watch the docking of the Soyuz live here via SPACE.com's NASA TV feed. The broadcast begins at 8:30 a.m. EST (1330 GMT), followed by live hatch opening coverage at 11:15 a.m. EST (1615 GMT). [Expedition 34 Launch in Pictures]

Complete crew

Three crewmembers are already living onboard the space station awaiting the new arrivals: commander Kevin Ford of NASA, and cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin, both flight engineers for the station's Expedition 34 mission. Once the new trio joins them, the Expedition 34 team will be complete, bringing the orbiting laboratory back up to its usual six-person crew complement.

Romanenko, who has flown to the space station once before, said that a six-person team is key for the kind of work they want to do in the lab.

"I think we need to continue as we've been doing, six people per increment," Romanenko, a veteran of one previous trip to space, said in a preflight interview with NASA. "I think this will again maximize the number of experiments that we do on station. Also, this will facilitate the process of adapting to space. It will help us develop skills that we'll be able to use when flying people to other planets."

While working and living in orbit, the spaceflyers will be responsible for monitoring the 110 experiments onboard, as well as keeping their bodies in shape, and performing maintenance to keep the station running smoothly.

First Canadian commander

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3 New Crewmembers to Arrive at Space Station Friday