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![From left to right: Terry Virts from the US space agency NASA, Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, and European Space Agency ( ESA) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti at a press conference at Baikonur station on 23rd November 2014 [Image: Roscosmos]](http://thebricspost.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/dsc_1614.jpg)
From left to right: Terry Virts from the US space agency NASA, Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, and European Space Agency ( ESA) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti at a press conference at Baikonur station on 23rd November 2014 [Image: Roscosmos]
“The spacecraft berthed to the docking unit of the Rassvet (MIM-1) module in an automatic mode at 05:48 Moscow Time [02:48 UTC],” a Roscosmos, the Russian federal aerospace department spokesperson was quoted by Russian Tass agency.
The three cosmonauts will serve on the $100 billion space outpost, the ISS for 169 days, executing tasks including carrying out legions of scientific experiments.
Currently working at the ISS are Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyayev and Yelena Serova, and NASA spaceman Barry Wilmore.
On a cargo resupply mission to the ISS, an unmanned spaceship operated by private US firm Orbital Sciences Corp. exploded just minutes after its launch last month.
The ISS, the 15-nation laboratory, which flies at an altitude of about 260 miles (420 km), is overseen by Russia and the United States but the only way to reach it is by using Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft. The ability to launch crews into orbit from the US ended with Nasa’s shuttle program in 2011.
The United States currently pays Russia more than $60 million per person to fly its astronauts up.
