US-Russian crew hooks up with space station after fastest ride ever

Watch a Soyuz rocket lift off, sending three spacefliers to the International Space Station.

By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

A NASA astronaut and his two Russian crewmates made the fastest-ever trip to the International Space Station on Thursday, arriving less than six hours after launch.

In the past, it's taken two days for Soyuz spaceships to make the trip from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. But mission planners worked out a more efficient procedure that made it possible for the Soyuz to catch up with the station in just four orbits, compared with more than 30 orbits under the previous flight plan.

Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin, along with NASA's Chris Cassidy, rocketed into orbit from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:43 p.m. ET Thursday (2:43 a.m. Friday local time). "The spacecraft is nominal, we feel great," Vinogradov, the spacecraft's commander, reported as the rocket ascended to orbit.

NASA launch commentator Josh Byerly hailed Thursday's flight, saying that the crew was "on the fast track" to the station.

The six-hour trip lasted roughly as long as an airplane flight from Seattle to Miami. NASA officials say the fast-rendezvous procedure minimizes thetime that crew members spend in the Soyuz's close quarters and gets them to the much roomier space station in better shape. The down side is that the three spacefliers had to spend most of the trip sitting elbow to elbow in bulky spacesuits which might strike a familiar chord for Seattle-to-Miami fliers.

The fast-track technique relies on a complicated round of orbital choreography that was tested three times over the past eight months, using unmanned Russian Progress cargo ships.

Last week, the space station raised its orbit by about a mile and a half (2.5 kilometers) to put it in the correct position for intercepting the Soyuz. The Soyuz had to be launched at just the right moment, to get into just the right orbit at just the right distance behind the station. To catch up with the station at the right time, the Soyuz had to execute a precisely timed series of thruster firings a task that was made easier by an upgrade to the spacecraft's automated navigation system.

"From a technical point of view, we feel pretty comfortable with this," Cassidy said at a pre-launch news briefing. "All of the procedures are very similar to what we do in a two-day process, and we've trained it a number of times."

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US-Russian crew hooks up with space station after fastest ride ever