“Hatches are open! Crew meets Alexey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Donald Pettit!” reads a post on the Telegram channel.
Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub and Alexander Grebyonkin, as well as NASA astronauts Matthew Dominic, Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps, Tracy Dyson, Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams welcomed the participants of the 72nd long-duration expedition to the ISS.
Recall that the Soyuz-2.1a launch vehicle with the Soyuz MS-26 manned spacecraft was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome the day before at 19:23 Moscow time. The spacecraft flew “quickly” and docked with the small research module “Rassvet” of the Russian segment within three hours.
According to Roscosmos, this was the 194th docking of Soyuz spacecraft since 1967, including the 92nd with the ISS.
It should be noted that the expedition of Ovchinin, Wagner and Pettit will last 202 days. A spacewalk is planned, as well as a number of scientific and applied experiments.
