At 11:37 am on Friday, the International Space Station gainedthree new crewmembers, bringing Expedition 34 to its full crew complement.
The new crewmembers are all veteran of space station missions. They include NASA astronaut Thomas Marshburn, making his third trip to the International Space Station; Russian Cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, who’s previously spent six months on the station; and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who helped install the station’s robotic arm.
The three left Kazakhstan aboard a Russian Soyuz Wednesday morning and spent two days in orbit before docking with the International Space Station.
This marks the complete crew of the International Space Station’s Expedition 34. They will occupy the station until May 2013 when the current crew Kevin Ford, Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin will leave the station. At that point, Expedition 35 will begin under the command of Hadfield, who will be the Station’s first Canadian commander.