Soyuz craft docks safely

A Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut docked yesterday at the International Space Station, a Russian space agency said a spokesman.

“The ship docked at 5.24 GMT. Everything went ahead normally,” the spokesman said. The Soyuz-FG rocket blasted off on Monday in Russia’s first manned mission in more than five months after the workhorse rockets were temporarily grounded following the failed launch of an unmanned Progress supply ship in August. The capsule was carrying American Dan Burbank and Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin, who are joining the three crew on board the ISS. The current ISS crew of American Mike Fossum, Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa and Russia’s Sergei Volkov will return to earth on November 22 and a new crew will head up from Baikonur on December 21. The crash of the Progress in Siberia eroded faith in Russia’s status as a space superpower just as it had taken the responsibility for being the sole nation capable of taking humans to the ISS after the retirement of the US shuttle in July. The Soyuz-U rocket that failed to take the Progress to orbit is closely related to the Soyuz-FG used for manned launches.