Soyuz tourist, crew successfully enter space station

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying Expedition 14 crew members automatically docked on Wednesday at the International Space Station at 4:34 a.m. EDT (at 05:21 GMT) , a spokesman for the Russian Mission Control Center said Wednesday.

Expedition 14 Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin along with 40 years old U.S. citizen of Iranian origin, Anousheh Ansari, who is the first female spaceflight participant to visit the station, successfully entered their new home, the ISS.

Landing footage of Soyuz TMA 9 spacecraft, which blasted off on Monday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, was shown live at ground control at Korolev outside Moscow.

They were warmly greeted by the Expedition 13 crew members upon floating through the hatch between the ISS and the Soyuz spacecraft, which orbits about 240 miles (386 kilometers) above Earth.

Lopez-Alegria and Tyurin will replace Expedition 13 Commander Pavel Vinogradov and NASA Science Officer Jeff Williams, who have been on the station since April, while European Space Agency Astronaut Thomas Reiter will remain on the station and continue journey with Expedition 14.

The new crew is scheduled to meet two U.S. shuttles at the station, to unload two Russian Progress cargo ships and to perform as many as four spacewalks, perhaps three in January in U.S. spacesuits, relating to station assembly. The other would be done earlier in Russian spacesuits to retrieve and install experiments.

Two Expedition 15 crew members are expected to arrive next spring to replace Lopez-Alegria and Tyurin.

Vinogradov, Williams and Ansari, who is visiting station under contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency and paid $20 million for the tour, are scheduled to return to Earth on Sept. 28.