On 6 June at 11:12 GMT, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst, NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Roscosmos commander Sergei Prokopyev launched into space in the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. MS-09 is the 138th flight of a Soyuz spacecraft.
The launch and the flight to orbit was nominal. After reaching orbit the three astronauts aligned their spacecraft with the International Space Station and approached the orbital outpost for docking - this process took 34 hours in total. The two days were spent in the cramped orbital module of the Soyuz that is approximately the size of a car. The Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station on 8 June at 13:01 GMT (15:01 CEST) and successfully docked.
The main reason I am writing this post is to share these beautiful photos of the rendezvous taken from the ISS. I found these photos on the official European Space Agency facebook page but they were originally posted by Russian Cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev on his Twitter profile
I hope you appreciate these photos.
This picture shows astronauts already on the ISS getting ready to welcome the "newcomers":
All of them together (Soyuz MS-09 crew in bottom row from left to right: Sergei Prokopyev, Alexander Gerst, Serena Auñón-Chancellor):
