Shuttle Endeavour, which had been docked with the Mir space station, unhooked on Thursday, about a half hour after the Russian space agency launched a Soyuz rocket with three new crew members for the space station.
The crew of the space station is expected to rise from three to six in mid-2009.
BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | Endeavour launched from Florida
The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives.
The crew of the Space Station will open the hatch of Dragon tomorrow.
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After unloading the Dragon, the crew of the Space Station will reload it with new cargo for departure to Earth on October 28.
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And in 2012 the crew of the space station were ordered into escape capsules as a precaution after a piece of debris passed close by.
The leak was detected after space station crew reported seeing small white flakes floating away from the station, the space agency said.
The space station crew has been limited to two full-time residents since last year's suspension of space shuttle flights in the wake of the Columbia accident.
BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | Astronauts may get time extension
And it's possible space officials might decide that the longer, old-fashioned way -- allowing the crew to get its space legs over two days, however cramped they might be -- is preferable, depending on how this mission goes, Humphries said.
After a two-day journey aboard the Soyuz capsule, the crew will dock with the space station, overlapping briefly with the current crew - station commander Mike Fossum of Nasa, Japan's Satoshi Furukawa and Russia's Sergei Volkov - who will then return to earth.
"We're going to do what's safest for the crew and for the space station, " Suffredini said.
Nyberg, 43, spent two weeks in space in 2008 as part of a U.S. space shuttle crew.
Usachev, Voss and Helms, having completed 156 days on Alpha, now become members of the space shuttle crew.
The December Soyuz mission will restore the space station crew size to six and continue normal crew rotations.
The Progress spacecraft being delivered by the rocket is unmanned, and filled with supplies for the crew of the International Space Station.
Suffredini said Monday that space station crew is well-supplied due to the delivery of goods by the final U.S. shuttle mission carried out by Atlantis last month.
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The crew of the International Space Station is on alert this weekend thanks to a piece of space debris from an old Chinese satellite, which has the potential to hit the station.
FORBES: Progress 46 Successfully Docks With International Space Station
With a planned rotation of the six crew members aboard the space station scheduled to begin next month, a delay in using the Soyuz could prevent the ability to bring replacements, Suffredini said.
The first crew of the International Space Station took up residence 200 miles above Earth on this date 10 years ago and we have had a sustained human presence in space ever since.
The two space station crews, along with the four Discovery astronauts, continued unloading supplies from the Italian-built Leonardo cargo module, a shiny giant cylinder that the shuttle crew attached to the space station on Monday.
The two space station crews, along with the four Discovery astronauts, have finished unloading supplies from the Italian-built Leonardo cargo module, a shiny giant cylinder that the shuttle crew attached to the space station on Monday.
This is the first successful launch of a Soyuz rocked since a failed launch in April led to speculation that NASA might send the current crew of the International Space Station home until another launch vehicle was developed.
"The Expedition 30 crew aboard the International Space Station received an 'all clear' to move out of their Soyuz vehicles after a small piece of a Russian Cosmos satellite debris passed by the complex without incident early Saturday, " the statement said.
The Progress M-12M that went down last week was to deliver more than 3.8 tons of cargo to the space station crew, including food supplies, medical equipment, personal hygiene items and scientific equipment needed for experiments, according to Roscosmos and space officials.
However, the NASA official, Mike Suffredini, said no decisions can be made until a commission appointed by Russia completes its investigation of the August 24 crash involving a Soyuz rocket -- the same kind used to power the flights of crew members to the space station.
Those of you who have seen the film Apollo 13 know the story - but on the site is a transcript of the mission where you can read the conversations between a crew in a crippled space craft and the guys on earth trying to get them home - it's absolutely fascinating.
On board were three new crew members for the International Space Station.
It will offer private suites in first class, wider seats throughout the plane, and overhead rest areas for the crew to open up more space for the passengers.
"We are comforted by the knowledge we have brought our seven friends home, " said Bob Cabana, director of Flight Crew Operations at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
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