Russian Spacecraft Docks to ISS

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, April 28, 2003

Russian Spacecraft Docks to ISS

The Russian Soyuz-TMA-2 spacecraft carrying Russian-American crew successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday, Interfax news agency reported.

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The Russian Soyuz-TMA-2 spacecraft carrying Russian-American crew successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday, Interfax news agency reported.

All automatic docking systems, both the Soyuz-TMA-2 and the lower docking unit of the Zarya module attached to the Russian segment of the ISS, functioned correctly, Interfax quoted the press service of the Russian space mission control center in Korolyov outside Moscow as saying.

Soyuz-TMA-2 successfully adjusted its trajectory long before it approached the ISS, and the docking was carried out according to plan, Interfax said.

The docking took place on schedule at 9:56 a.m. Moscow time (0556 GMT) about 400 kilometers high above Russian territory.

Captain Yuri Malenchenko and flight engineer Edward Lu, who will replace the current ISS crew, are feeling okay, according to the press.

Lu and Malenchenko are replacing the trio of Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin and US astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit who were stuck on the station after the US Columbia Shuttle disaster on Feb. 1.

Malenchenko and Lu, who briefly visited the space station in 2000 before it was permanently occupied, are scheduled to remain onboard until October.

The 40-meter rocket blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome inKazakhstan on Saturday morning, which is the first manned space mission since the US spacecraft Columbia broke up on re-entry in February this year, which killed all seven astronauts aboard.

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