Three New Crew Members Dock With The International Space Station

After a two day flight, the Soyuz MS-08 spacecraft docked to the International Space Station at 1940 UTC on Friday 23rd March 2018 thus ending the first manned space flight of 2018.

The spacecraft was launched aboard a Soyuz-FG rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday 21st March 2018 at 1744 UTC.

The crew consisted of two American astronauts, Dr Abdrew Feustel and Rick Arnold and the Soyuz Commander Oleg Artemyew, a Russian cosmonaut.

All three crew members have previously been in space. Oleg Artemyew achieved 169 days 5 days and 6 minutes in space during an ISS tour of duty in 2014. Dr Feustel was on the Hubble Telescope servicing team in 2009 and in 2011 was on the crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavour for a flight to the ISS. In 2009 Arnold was a crew member of the Space Shuttle Discovery for an ISS construction mission.

This flight brings the crew of the ISS up to a total of six. The currently incumbent crew members are the Expedition 55 Commander Anto Shkaplerow of Roscosmos, Scott Tingle of NASA and Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).