Soyuz spacecraft docks at ISS for year-long mission

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft with three crew on board successfully docked at the International Space Station Saturday after blasting off from Kazakhstan, NASA said, launching a year-long mission on the orbiting outpost.

The Soyuz-TMA16M spacecraft's crew included a US astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut who will be the first to spend an entire year on the ISS.

The successful docking occurred after the Soyuz took off without a glitch from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 22:42 pm (1942 GMT) Friday, Russian space agency officials said earlier.

The hatch opened about two hours later at 0333 GMT, once the pressure between the two space vessels had equalised.

The three exchanged enthusiastic hugs with crew members already on board the ISS after the hatch opened.

NASA flight engineer Scott Kelly and Russian Mikhail Kornienko will together spend a total of 342 days aboard the ISS, while the third crew member, Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, will spend the usual period of six months.

Kelly, 51, and 54-year-old Kornienko will take part in the extended mission to test the effects of long-term space missions on the human body.

The trip marks the longest amount of time that two people will live continuously at the ISS, though a handful of Russian cosmonauts spent a year to 14 months at the Russian space station Mir in the 1990s.

"This is the first time we're doing it as an international partnership, which I think is one of the great success stories of the International Space Station," Kelly said at a news conference in Baikonur ahead of the launch.

He said the experiment could prove vital towards planning future international missions, including to Mars.

Read more from the original source:
Soyuz spacecraft docks at ISS for year-long mission