Russian spaceship Soyuz TMA-21 – Gagarin- has successfully docked to the International Space Station’s Poisk module today, April 7, at 03.09 MSK.
Gagarin carrying a crew of ISS-27 increment lifted off from the Baikonur Space Center Tuesday.
Two Roscosmos cosmonauts, Alexander Samokutyayev and Andrei Borisenko, and NASA astronaut Ronald Garan, are supposed to stay in orbit for five months.
Like their fellow-cosmonauts ISS-27 Commander Dmitry Kondratyev, ESA’s Paolo Nespoli and NASA’s Catherine Coleman, whose orbital mission began last December, the new crew is expected to conduct from space the special jubilee events dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the first manned flight to space.
The very name of the spaceship commemorates the Earth’s first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who made a 108-minutes-long orbital rotation around the globe aboard the Vostok ship April 12, 1961.
The crew of will face a long enough list of knotty jobs, including the docking and unloading of three Progress cargo spacecraft and joint activities with the crews of two last shuttle flights – the Endeavour that is due to blast off April 19 and the Atlantis, whose start into orbit has been scheduled for the last days of June.
The resident crew will also make a spacewalk to service the Russian segment of the ISS.

Roscosmos PAO [http://www.roscosmos.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=11623]