'Gagarin' craft docks with ISS
Source: Agencies |
April 8, 2011, Friday
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Print Edition
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A SOYUZ craft adorned with a portrait of the first man in space docked with the International Space Station yesterday, days before the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's pioneering flight.
American astronaut Ron Garan and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyayev and Andrey Borisenko floated through the hatch to the warm welcome of three crew already aboard the orbital station after the docking, which NASA said took place at 3:09am Moscow time on Wednesday.
Space Station Commander, cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev, called it an honor for all on board to be "on the front lines" for the anniversary fanfare.
"Gagarin is more than just an idol now, but a symbol of the beginning of a new era," Kondratyev said from orbit, in comments posted by the Russian space agency Roskomos. "Gagarin's name is a symbol of the conquest of space, a symbol of the dreams of generations of people to fly from our planet beyond the bounds of what is possible," he said.
The Soyuz TMA-21, with a picture of Gagarin on the side, blasted off hours before dawn on Tuesday from Russia's long-secret Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan, where the cosmonaut's flight began on April 12, 1961.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was two years old at the time of the flight, visited Gagarin's hometown, some 150 kilometers from Moscow, yesterday.
Moscow is also expecting to welcome the heads of all the world's space agencies for celebrations on Tuesday and talks on the future of human space flight after the space station is retired, due in 2020.
The cramped Soyuz does not look very different from the Soviet craft that took Gagarin around Earth on a 108-minute, single-orbit flight that stunned the world and raised the stakes in the US-Soviet space race.
It was "a giant leap in our evolution as a species", Garan said in his last blog post before lift-off.
American astronaut Ron Garan and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyayev and Andrey Borisenko floated through the hatch to the warm welcome of three crew already aboard the orbital station after the docking, which NASA said took place at 3:09am Moscow time on Wednesday.
Space Station Commander, cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev, called it an honor for all on board to be "on the front lines" for the anniversary fanfare.
"Gagarin is more than just an idol now, but a symbol of the beginning of a new era," Kondratyev said from orbit, in comments posted by the Russian space agency Roskomos. "Gagarin's name is a symbol of the conquest of space, a symbol of the dreams of generations of people to fly from our planet beyond the bounds of what is possible," he said.
The Soyuz TMA-21, with a picture of Gagarin on the side, blasted off hours before dawn on Tuesday from Russia's long-secret Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan, where the cosmonaut's flight began on April 12, 1961.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was two years old at the time of the flight, visited Gagarin's hometown, some 150 kilometers from Moscow, yesterday.
Moscow is also expecting to welcome the heads of all the world's space agencies for celebrations on Tuesday and talks on the future of human space flight after the space station is retired, due in 2020.
The cramped Soyuz does not look very different from the Soviet craft that took Gagarin around Earth on a 108-minute, single-orbit flight that stunned the world and raised the stakes in the US-Soviet space race.
It was "a giant leap in our evolution as a species", Garan said in his last blog post before lift-off.
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