First female commander to dock at ISS

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft is speeding toward a high-flying link-up early today at the International Space Station, carrying a crew that includes an American astronaut destined to become the first female commander of the outpost.

Launched Wednesday from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the Soyuz is due to dock at the station at 10:52 a.m. EDT, and hatches between the spacecraft are slated to swing open at 12:20 p.m. EDT.

Floating over the threshold will be U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson, veteran Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Shiekh Muszaphar Shukor, an orthopedic doctor who is the first Malaysian to fly in space.

Live NASA TV coverage of the docking and hatch opening will be webcast real time here in The Flame Trench. Simply click the link below the image above to launch our NASA TV viewer.

Whitson, 47, and Malenchenko, 45, form the nucleus of the 16th expedition to the station since the outpost was opened for business in November 2000.

Both veterans with previous tours on the outpost, the two will play key roles in a complex expansion project aimed at opening up European and Japanese wings on the outpost.

They plan to work with three U.S. flight engineers -- Clay Anderson, Dan Tani and Garrett Reisman -- during a busy assembly period aimed at adding the European Columbus laboratory, a two-armed Canadian robot and the first part of the Japanese Kibo science facility.

Shukor, flying under a $25 million Russian Federal Space Agency contract funded by the Malaysian government, will remain onboard the station for 10 days and then return to Earth with Expedition 15 crewmates Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov, who have been living and working on the station since April.

Whitson and Malenchenko will remain on board until next spring.

If all goes well, shuttle Discovery and a seven-member crew will launch Oct. 23 on a mission to deliver the U.S. Harmony module to the station. The multihatch module will serve as a pressurized passageway to the still-to-be-launched European and Japanese science labs.















Yurchikhin is scheduled to hand over command to Whitson on Oct. 19. Discovery's crew, led by veteran astronaut Pam Melroy is slated to launch four days later.

It would be the first time two woman have simultaneously commanded space missions.

NOTE ON IMAGES: Click to enlarge and save the Associated Press images. The first shows the Expedition 16 crew and a Malaysian outpost visitor on steps to the Soyuz rocket that lofted them into low Earth orbit. Top to bottom are Shiekh Muszaphar Shukor, Peggy Whitson and Yuri Malenchenko. The other photo shows Whitson, an accomplished biochemist who served as the first science officer on the station in 2002, suited up and ready to fly.