Soyuz Spacecraft And Crew Due To Dock Tonight At Station

A new crew that includes a Russian cosmonaut and two American astronauts are due to arrive tonight at the International Space Station, where they will join three already onboard the outpost.

Fyodor Yurchikhin, Shannon Walker and Douglas Wheelock are scheduled to dock at the station around 6:25 p.m. tonight, capping a two-day trip from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The three launched Tuesday from the central Asian spaceport.

Awaiting their arrival: Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko as well as American astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson. They arrived in April and will remain onboard through September.

Hatches between the Soyuz and the station are scheduled to swing open about 9:25 p.m. A welcome ceremony will follow.

You can watch live NASA TV coverage of the docking and the hatch-opening here in The Flame Trench. Click the NASA TV box on the right side of the page to launch our NASA TV viewer and live coverage. Docking coverage will begin at 6 p.m. EDT and coverage of the welcome ceremony will begin at 9 p.m. EDT.