Soyuz multinational crew joins ISS after docking

A three-member multinational crew arrived to the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday (July 9) aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket, a NASA TV broadcast showed.

NASA astronaut Kathleen "Kate" Rubins, Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin and Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi, who lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on July 7, joined NASA astronaut and station commander Jeff Williams and two Russian cosmonauts who have been aboard the orbital outpost since March.

The crew's Russian Soyuz capsule docked with the station, which orbits about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth, at 0406 GMT Saturday (12:06 a.m. EDT) to begin a four-month mission.

Rubins, a cancer and infectious diseases researcher, plans to attempt the first DNA sequencing in orbit. Ivanishin has made one previous flight to the station. Rubins and Onishi are both rookie astronauts.

Thursday's launch marked the debut flight of a next-generation Russian Soyuz capsule, currently the only vehicles capable of ferrying crewmembers to and from the station, a $100 billion project of 15 nations.

Upgrades to the Soyuz include better shielding to protect the spacecraft from micrometeoroid and orbital debris impacts, additional batteries, improved communications and tracking equipment, new steering thrusters, larger solar arrays, an improved rendezvous and docking system and a GPS-equipped landing system.

NASA hopes to resume flying station crewmembers from the United States in 2018 aboard capsules under development by Boeing Co and privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX.

A docking system that the new commercial U.S. spaceships will need to park at the station is scheduled to be launched aboard a SpaceX cargo ship on July 18.