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Soyuz capsule docks with space station
(AP)
Updated: 2006-04-01 13:26
KOROLYOV, Russia - A Soyuz capsule docked with the
international space station Saturday, bringing Brazil's first astronaut, a new
Russian-American crew and a fresh load of supplies, equipment and experiments.
Two days after blasting off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan,
the TMA-8 capsule arrived at the orbiting station and latched on just after 8:19
a.m. (0419 GMT), guided into place automatically by computers on the capsule and
on the station.
Dozens of Brazilian, American and Russian officials fell
into hushed silence at Russia's Mission Control Center in Korolyov, outside
Moscow, as the capsule neared the station, then broke into applause when contact
was made.
Cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and astronaut Jeffrey Williams, who
will replace the current crew for six months on the orbiting station, were
joined on the trip by Brazil's first man in space, Marcos C. Pontes, who will
return to Earth on April 9.
"Until the very moment that he returns to
Earth, the hearts of all Brazilians will be following him," said Raimondo Mussi,
a Brazilian space agency official who monitored the docking at Mission Control.
"A Brazilian astronaut in space contains a piece of every Brazilian on Earth."
"I think it's safe now to call him a cosmonaut," Nikolai Sevastyanov,
the head of the state-controlled RKK Energiya company that built Soyuz craft,
said of Pontes.
The crew was to spend about 1 1/2 hours checking systems
before opening the air locks and seeing the station's current crew, Russian
Valery Tokarev and American Bill McArthur, face to face.
Crew commander
Vinogradov has said they plan to carry out at least one space walk and more than
65 scientific experiments during the mission, including some to test human
reaction to prolonged space travel.
"I was shaking," said Kleber Paiva,
a graduate student at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, which had two
experiments that Pontes was to conduct during his nine days aboard the ISS. "I'm
so proud to be a part of this group, to be working with these people."
Vinogradov and Williams are to be joined later by European Space Agency
astronaut Thomas Reiter of Germany, when the space shuttle Discovery visits the
space station in July. Once Reiter arrives, the station's long-duration crew
will be three in number for the first time since May 2003, following the
Columbia shuttle disaster that February.
The American space program has
depended on the Russians for cargo and astronaut delivery to the space station
since the Columbia explosion. The shuttle Discovery visited the station in July
but had problems with the foam insulation on its external fuel tank.
Pontes trained in the United States and had been scheduled to fly to the
space station aboard a U.S. space shuttle _ plans that were scrapped after the
Columbia disaster. Brazil and Russia then opened talks that eventually led to
Pontes' chance to be placed into orbit.
He carried a Brazilian national
flag and a Brazilian soccer jersey into space, hoping it would bring his
national team victory in this summer's World Cup in Germany.
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