A Russian spaceship carrying two astronauts and the fifth space tourist docked with the International Space Station (ISS) Monday evening after hurtling two days in space.
The Soyuz TMA-10 ship, which soared into the sky over the Central Asian steppe last Saturday with a two-man crew of the ISS and a Hungarian-born American tourist, hooked up with the space station at 11:10 p.m. Moscow time (1910 GMT).
The hatch will open about one hour later and then the astronauts can enter the space station.
Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov, the 15th crew for the ISS, with the U.S. tourist Charles Simonyi manned the vessel that set off at 9:31 p.m. Moscow time (1731 GMT) from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The 58-year-aged Simonyi, a software tycoon, will stay in orbit for 12 days, and then return with the 14th ISS resident crew Mikhail Tyurin and Michael Lopez-Alegria. The trip reportedly cost the Hungary-born American 25 million U.S. dollars.