New Crew Arrives at Space Station
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Space shuttle Endeavour delivered a new crew to the international space station Friday to relieve the three men who have been living aboard the orbiting outpost for six months.
Space station astronaut Daniel Bursch was so excited to see his ride home that he rang the ship’s bell and announced the shuttle’s arrival seven minutes early. His crewmate Carl Walz jumped ahead in the hatch-opening procedures but had to wait.
Bursch, Walz and Yuri Onufrienko, their Russian commander, moved into the space station in early December and did not expect to stay so long. Robot-arm problems at the station and then shuttle launching delays added more than a month to their stint in orbit.
Replacing them aboard the space station are two Russians and one American, astronaut-biochemist Peggy Whitson, only the second woman to settle in.
Endeavour will remain at the space station for eight days, during which the shuttle astronauts will conduct three spacewalks, one of them to fix the wrist on the space station’s robot arm.
When Bursch, Walz and Onufrienko return to Earth aboard Endeavour on June 17, they will have spent 194 days in space, a U.S. record.
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