Expedition 34 Flight Engineers Tom Marshburn, Roman Romanenko and Chris Hadfield docked their Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft to the International Space Station’s Rassvet module at 9:09 a.m. EST on Friday after spending two days in orbit.
The hatches between the Soyuz and the Rassvet module are set to be opened at 11:45 a.m. when Expedition 34 Commander Kevin Ford and Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin will greet their new crewmates. Once the hatches are opened, the six-member crew is set to take part in a welcome ceremony with family members and mission officials then participate in a safety briefing.
Expedition 34 will be a six-member crew until March 2013 when Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin undock from the Poisk module and return home inside the Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft for a landing in Kazakhstan. When they undock Expedition 35 will officially begin as Hadfield becomes commander staying behind with Marshburn and Romanenko before finally returning home in May 2013.
You can watch the December 19th launch in Kazakhstan of the Expedition 34 flight crew here.