This story was updated at 1:54 p.m. EDT.
A Russian spacecraft carrying a space tourist, a rookie astronaut
and a veteran cosmonaut docked at the International Space Station Saturday
after a two-day chase.
The Soyuz TMA-14 vehicle, which launched
Thursday from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, pulled into a parking spot
at the station at 9:05 a.m. EDT (1305 GMT). The craft delivered U.S.
billionaire Charles Simonyi, the world's first repeat space tourist, along
with cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and NASA astronaut Michael Barratt, who will
both begin a six-month stay at the orbital lab.
Shortly before docking, automated systems aboard the Soyuz
indicated that a thruster was malfunctioning and driving the vehicle away from
the space station. Russian mission controllers decided to switch off automatic
steering, and told Padalka, the Soyuz commander, to manually guide the ship
into port to close the last 150 meters (500 feet).
"We controlled the situation all the way through,"
A Russian space official said in a briefing after docking. "Of course we
will investigate it and we will correct the algorithms of the flight."
The docking went smoothly otherwise, with the craft pulling
in to harbor about 9 minutes ahead of schedule.
After docking, Russian mission control thanked Padalka for
the good work.
"Well, just the way you taught us," he replied.
The hatches between the two vehicles were opened at 12:36
p.m. EDT (1636 GMT), slightly behind schedule to allow the station crew to
finish up a time-sensitive experiment on the Japanese Kibo laboratory.
The spaceflyers were greeted with hugs and hellos from the
station's Expedition 18 crew, and calls from Russian and American officials as
well as the spaceflyers' families.
"Don't break anything," one of Barrat's children
told him. "I'll try not to," Barratt replied. "We're having a
lot of fun, and the food's not bad either."
Space touring
Simonyi plans 12 days' worth of educational outreach
activities, Earth observation and scientific research for his sojourn. The
software executive paid $35 million to the Russian Federal Space Agency through
the U.S. company Space Adventures, which also brokered his first trip to space
in April 2007.
"I thought it was rather short," Simonyi told SPACE.com
recently. "Certainly there were many things that I wanted to do that I
haven't done. Continuing to work there and continuing to support the work of
private spaceflight, I think it's worth it."
Veteran cosmonaut Padalka is in charge of the space
station's Expedition
19 crew, and is the first person to command a station mission twice.
Barratt, a first-time
spaceflyer, will serve as Expedition 19 flight engineer.
"Looking at the Earth, looking at our home planet from
space - I will certainly be at the end of a line of hundreds of people who have
done that before me, but I can't imagine anything that's going to affect me
more than just seeing that from that perch," Barratt told SPACE.com
before launch.
There are three people currently onboard the space station
eagerly awaiting the new arrivals. NASA astronaut Michael Fincke, commander of
the station's Expedition 18 mission, is due to be relieved by Padalka. Barratt
is set to replace cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov. Both Fincke and Lonchakov have been
on the station since last October and will return to Earth with Simonyi on
April 7.
The third person already at the station is Japanese
Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata, who will stay onboard to
join the crew of Expedition 19. Wakata, a flight engineer, is his nation's first
long-duration astronaut.
"You know that all these countries have been
participating in ISS project for 10 years as a minimum, and now it's pretty
high time to have all these astronauts and cosmonauts together working in
space," Padalka said in a preflight interview.
Settling in
Later, Simonyi will move his custom-made seat liner into the
Soyuz returning Fincke and Lonchakov, who are returning to Earth after more
than five months in space.
On April 2, command of the orbiting laboratory will
officially pass over from Fincke to Padalka during a change of command
ceremony.
The new Expedition 19 crew has their work cut out for them
preparing the orbiting laboratory to receive double-sized crews of six starting
this summer.
"Imagine that you've invited a lot of people to your
house and that some of those houseguests are coming to stay; so you're going to
spend a lot of time cleaning closets and making sure your kitchen is
ready," Barratt said in a preflight interview.
The crew plans two or three spacewalks to lay the ground for
the arrival of the Mini Research Module 2, a node similar to the Pirs docking
compartment currently in orbit, due to launch on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in
August.
SPACE.com will provide full coverage of Simonyi's second
space tourist flight and the Expedition 19 mission with reporter Clara
Moskowitz and senior editor Tariq Malik in New York. Click here for mission updates
and SPACE.com's live NASA TV video feed.
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