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Three US astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut arrived Tuesday at the International Space Station for a six-month mission on board the orbiting laboratory.<\/p>\n
During their stay, in which they are rotating in to replace departing crew, some 200 scientific experiments are scheduled to be carried out.<\/p>\n
The quartet blasted off from Florida late Sunday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.<\/p>\n
The capsule docked with the ISS and its hatch was opened at 3:50 am Tuesday US eastern time (0850 GMT), with the smiling new arrivals hugging their colleagues as they entered, a live feed of the docking showed.<\/p>\n
This is the eighth standard ISS crew rotation mission performed by SpaceX for the US space agency NASA, reflected in the mission name: Crew-8.<\/p>\n
American Michael Barratt is the only Crew-8 astronaut to have already visited the space station. The ISS stay is the first for Americans Matthew Dominick and Jeanette Epps, and Russian Alexander Grebenkin.<\/p>\n
They join seven crew already on board the ISS.<\/p>\n
After a transition period of a few days, the four members of Crew-7\u2014from Denmark, Japan, Russia and the United States\u2014will return to Earth aboard another SpaceX capsule.<\/p>\n
NASA and Russian space corporation Roscosmos, which jointly operate the ISS, have established an astronaut exchange program, each taking turns to send crew members to the outpost.<\/p>\n
The program has been maintained despite deep tensions over the war in Ukraine, and the ISS is now one of the few areas of cooperation between Washington and Moscow.<\/p>\n
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