The Expedition 70-71 crew, consisting of NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara and two cosmonauts from Roscosmos, arrived safely at the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, September 15.
NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara and two cosmonauts from Roscosmos arrived safely at the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, September 15, thus increasing the number of people on the station to 10. The Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft carrying O'Hara, as well as Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, arrived at 11:44, approximately three hours after the crew launch from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome at 14:53. It was docked with the station's Rassvet module.
O'Hara, Kononenko and Chub will join the Expedition 17 crew when the doors open at 10:69 p.m. O'Hara will spend six months on the space station, while Kononenko and Chub will serve on the space station for a year. They will work on technology development, Earth sciences, biology and human research to benefit all people. This was the first spaceflight for O'Hara, the fifth for Kononenko, and the first for Chub.
Expedition 70 will launch on Wednesday, September 27, following the departure of record-breaking NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin.
Rubio recently broke the record for the longest single space flight by an American astronaut. After a year-long stay on the space station, the trio will touch down in Kazakhstan on September 27, at which point Rubio will have spent a total of 371 days in space, breaking the record for the longest single spaceflight by an American astronaut.