Marco Polo Mission update – Docking and Ingress
Docking of the Soyuz vehicle TM-34 with the
International Space Station was completed successfully
today without manual intervention at 09:55 CEST (07:55 GMT).
At 11:25 (09:25 GMT) hatch opening and ingress was followed by
the meeting between the crew and Expedition 4 on board
the International Space Station.
At 11:31 (09:31 GMT) it was the turn of Mr Feustel-Buechl, ESA
Director of Human Spaceflight and Microgravity
programme, to address the crew from the Mission Control
room in Moscow, following a first address by the
Italian Ambassador of Moscow, Mr Facco-Bonnetti to
Roberto Vittori and his crewmates.
First and foremost, Mr Feustel addressed the Commander
of the ISS, Yuri Onufrienko, and Flight Engineers Dan
Bursch and Carl Walz of the resident Expedition 4
crew. He then asked the Commander of the Marco Polo
mission, Yuri Gidzenko, whether all the sytems had
performed well on board the Soyuz TM-34 and whether
the crew had adapted well to the conditions on board
throughout the flight.
When the turn came to Roberto
Vittori, he congratulated him for being the first
Italian to reach the ISS as a cosmonaut, with a
Russian spacecraft, and commented on this momentous
cooperation between ESA, ASI and the Russians. He also
stressed the importance of 15 years of fruitful
collaboration with the Russians. Roberto answered that
although he had only spent a few minutes in the space
station he already started to feel at home.
The Marco Polo mission has now truly commenced for
Roberto Vittori and his colleagues. A lot of work
including scientific experiments will be carried out
over the 8 coming days on board the ISS.
