New expedition 37 crew welcomed aboard ISS

The new Expedition 37 crew were welcomed aboard the International Space Station after docking to the Poisk mini-research module, the U.S. space agency said. Crew members Oleg Kotov, Mike Hopkins and Sergey Ryazanskiy were greeted Thursday by Expedition 37 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineers Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano, NASA said in a release. Hopkins of NASA joined Kotov and Ryazanskiy of the Russian Federal Space Agency in Wednesday's launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Hopkins and Ryazanskiy are flight engineers, and Kotov is the spacecraft commander, NASA said. They will spend 5 1/2 months in space living and working inside the orbital laboratory. They are expected to return home in March 2014, landing in Kazakhstan inside the Soyuz spacecraft they used to travel to the ISS. This is Kotov's third space station mission. Hopkins and Ryazanskiy are both on their first space mission. Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano have been aboard the space station since May 28.