Three new crew arrive at space station with fish
A pair of rookie Russian cosmonauts and a veteran U.S. astronaut arrived at the International Space Station on Thursday, boosting the crew back to full strength and bringing along 32 Japanese medaka fish.
Soyuz spacecraft commander Oleg Novitskiy, flight engineer Evgeny Tarelkin and NASA’s Kevin Ford ended a two-day journey with an 8:29 a.m. EDT (1229 GMT) docking at the orbital outpost as the ships sailed 254 miles above the planet.
After making sure seals between the two spacecraft were airtight, the men joined space station commander Sunita Williams, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko to return the station to its full, six-member crew.
The $100 billion station, a project of 15 nations, had had a crew of three onboard since September 16 because of normal rotation schedules.