Warm welcome in space for three new astronauts

Source: Agencies  |   2008-10-15  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

WITH welcoming hugs from astronauts, three new crew members joined the international space station yesterday when a Russian Soyuz craft docked after a flawless flight from Earth.

The Soyuz TMA-13 latched onto the station automatically a few minutes ahead of schedule, two days after blasting off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

After the hatches were opened 90 minutes later, paying space traveler Richard Garriott floated onto the station behind Russian cosmonaut Yuri Lonchakov and United States astronaut Michael Fincke. All three were greeted with hugs from the current crew members.

"Congratulations on leaving the cradle of Earth," Garriott's brother Robert said in a brief video linkup with the station from Mission Control outside Moscow, where he and other family members watched the docking on a giant screen. Among them was their father, a former NASA astronaut.

Garriott, 47, paid a reported US$30 million to fulfill his childhood dream of space travel and is to spend 10 days on the station.

"Hi, Peter Pan," his girlfriend, Kelly Miller, said during the video link. Garriott chuckled and said: "I can fly."

"You can fly," Miller replied. "Peter Pan's on the space station."

Garriott is the first American to follow his father into space. Dad Owen Garriott, 77, made two trips to space in the 1970s and 1980s, and he smiled and clapped after the successful docking.

"I'm pleased. Everything is going smoothly. It's looking great and they are starting off on a fascinating new adventure," he said from mission control headquarters.