KOROLYOV (Moscow Region), June 8. /TASS/. The crew of the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft that docked to the Russian Rassvet module of the International Space Station (ISS) at 4:01 p.m. Moscow time moved to the orbital outpost, Russia’s Flight Control Center told TASS on Friday.

The new expedition’s crew transferred to the world’s sole obiter after checking the docking’s air tightness and equalizing pressure between the docked spacecraft and the ISS, the Flight Control Center said.

"The hatches are open and the crew has moved to the ISS, cosmonauts are feeling well," the Flight Control Center said.

The Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft docked to the ISS in automated mode after a two-day orbital flight.

The spacecraft delivered the crew of Expedition 56/57 to the world’s sole orbiter: Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergei Prokopyev, NASA astronaut Serena Aunon-Chancellor and astronaut of the European Space Agency Alexander Gerst to the world’s sole orbiter. They were received by Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev and US astronauts Andrew Feustel and Richard Arnold aboard the International Space Station.

The new space expedition’s crew will stay for 187 days aboard the orbital outpost. Over this period, the crewmembers will be working with the Progress MS and US Dragon resupply ships, performing a program of 55 applied researches and experiments and carrying out spacewalks.

Under the program of the space station’s Russian segment, cosmonauts Prokopyev and Artemyev will make a spacewalk in August 2018 to install scientific equipment of the ICARUS (International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space) experiment on the space station’s external surface to monitor wildlife on Earth.

New Expedition’s crew

The new space mission will be the second expedition for Gerst. He performed his first space flight from May 28 to November 10, 2014 as part of Expedition 40/41 in the capacity of the flight engineer of the Souyz TMA-13M spacecraft and the space station. During his space mission, he made a spacewalk that lasted 6 hours and 13 minutes. His mission’s duration was 165 days. For Prokopyev and Aunon-Chancellor, this expedition will be the first in their career.

The Soyuz-FG carrier rocket with the manned Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft blasted off from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan at 14:12 Moscow time on Wednesday.