The Soyuz TMA-22 delivered NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and
Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin, who blasted off from
Kazakhstan on Monday. They moved onto the station about two hours after their
capsule successfully docked.
The three newcomers were greeted with hugs and handshakes
from American Michael Fossum, Russian Sergey Volkov and Japanese Satoshi
Furukawa who have been at the station since June and are due to return to Earth
next week.
The 39-year-old Shkaplerov and 42-year-old Ivanishin are
making their first flights into space. Burbank, 50, who will take over command
of the space station, is a veteran of 12-day shuttle missions in 2000 and 2006.
The three men are to remain aboard the space station until March.
Officials at Russia's Mission Control outside Moscow and the
cosmonauts' families radioed congratulations to the crew.
The mission's launch had been delayed for two months because
of the crash of an unmanned Progress cargo ship in August. That failed launch
raised doubts about future missions to the station, because the rocket the
crashed ship used had the same upper stage as the booster rockets carrying
Soyuz ships into orbit.
