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Russian cosmonauts visit US spacecraft Starliner after its troubled docking with ISS

Crew members examined the spacecraft, its zero gravity indicator and Rosie the Rocketeer, a crash test dummy tasked with riding inside the space capsule

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION, May 22. /TASS/. Russian crew members of the International Space Station (ISS) have inspected a new US spacecraft, Starliner, that docked with the ISS on Saturday after a series of glitches, a TASS correspondent, Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, has told TASS.

In his words, crew members examined the spacecraft, its zero gravity indicator and Rosie the Rocketeer, a crash test dummy tasked with riding inside the space capsule. The anthropomorphic test device is equipped with 15 sensors, whose goal is to collect data about what astronauts will have to endure during their flights.

The docking of the spacecraft, which was developed by Boeing, was automatic and took place on 20:28 US eastern time on Friday (03:28 of May 21 in Moscow) four minutes after it received the command. Two hours earlier Starliner made several maneuvers to approach the ISS at a distance of about 400 meters and then started to close in on the target. It was originally planned that the spacecraft would dock at 02:10 Moscow time. However, several malfunctions pushed back the docking by an hour and a half.

On November 17, 2021, TASS and Russia’s Roscosmos State Space Agency signed a memorandum of cooperation stipulating the establishment of a TASS news office onboard the International Space Station. Cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev is currently in charge of the office. Cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, whose mission lasted 12 days, was the first TASS special correspondent in space.

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