spacetoday.net: Soyuz docks with ISS

Posted: Fri, Oct 12, 2007, 8:48 PM ET (0048 GMT)
ISS illustration (NASA)

A Soyuz spacecraft carrying three people, including the first Malaysian cosmonaut, docked with the International Space Station on Friday morning. The Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft docked with the nadir port on the Zarya module of the ISS at 10:50 am EDT (1450 GMT), two days after launching from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. On board the Soyuz were two members of the ISS Expedition 16 crew, Peggy Whitson and Yuri Malenchenko, and guest cosmonaut Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, the first Malaysian in space. Whitson will take over as the ISS commander in a ceremony mext Friday, making her the first woman to command the space station. Whitson and Malenchenko will remain on the station for six months, while Shukor will return to Earth on October 21 with the departing Russian crew of Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov.