New crew enters ISS

Members of the 14th ISS crew have opened hatches and entered the International Space Station, a spokesman for the Russian Mission Control Center said Wednesday.

MISSION CONTROL CENTER (Korolyov, near Moscow), September 20 (RIA Novosti) -Members of the 14th ISS crew have opened hatches and entered the International Space Station, a spokesman for the Russian Mission Control Center said Wednesday.

The Russian Soyuz-TMA spacecraft successfully docked in automatic mode earlier on Wednesday and brought to the station space tourist Anousheh Ansari, 40, a U.S. citizen of Iranian origin, NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin.

The new Russian-U.S. crew will replace Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and U.S. astronaut Jeffrey Williams, who have been on the station since April.

The outgoing crew will take the Iranian-American telecommunications businesswoman, who paid $20 million for the tour, back to Earth in late September.

The new crew is scheduled to meet two U.S. shuttles at the ISS, to unload two Russian Progress cargo ships and to perform four spacewalks.