Nearly two days after launching from Kazakhstan, an American astronaut, Russian cosmonaut and American space tourist are closing in on the International Space Station early this morning.Michael Finke, Yury Lonchakov and millionaire video game maker Richard Garriott are expected to arrive at the station at 4:38 a.m. in their Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft.
After docking safely, the three men will join the station's three occupants - Sergei Volkov, Oleg Kononenko and Greg Chamitoff - for a welcome ceremony around 5:30 a.m.
You can watch a live webcast of the events here starting at 4 a.m. Just click the NASA TV box to the right side of the page to launch a NASA TV viewer. And click on any of the docking photos posted here to enlarge them.
IMAGE NOTE: Click on the image above to enlarge it, and again to make it bigger. This April, the Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft approached the International Space Station, carrying Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonauts Sergei Volkov, Expedition 17 commander; Oleg Kononenko, flight engineer; and South Korean spaceflight participant So-yeon Yi. Volkov and Kononenko were to spend six months on the station, while Yi was to return to Earth April 19 with two Expedition 16 crewmembers. Docking with the Pirs Docking Compartment occurred at 8:57 a.m. (EDT) on April 10, 2008. Photo credit: NASA.
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