Image above: The Expedition 20 crew welcomes the crew of STS-127 aboard the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA TVThe International Space Station population has grown to a record 13 today as the space shuttle Endeavour docked this afternoon.
The astronauts aboard Endeavour began rendezvous preparations this morning and performed a terminal initiation engine burn to begin the shuttle’s final approach and docking. The station hosts greeted their shuttle guests after opening hatches between the two spacecraft at 3:48 p.m. EDT to begin 11 days of docked operations. (more here at NASA)
Very cool video of the crew's welcome here at the Beeb here.
This is the first time two Canadians have been in space at the same time:
Canadians meet up in space stationAstronauts Payette and Thirsk rendezvous
The first ever extraterrestrial meeting of Canadians took place on Friday afternoon after the space shuttle Endeavour successfully docked with the orbiting International Space Station.
NASA TV/Reuters Astronaut Julie Payette gets a tour of the space station on Friday. She and fellow Canadian Robert Thirsk became the first Canadians to meet in space.
The much-delayed historic rendezvous between Canadian astronauts Julie Payette, a shuttle crew member, and Robert Thirsk, a space station crew member, took place aboard the space station just before 4 p.m. ET, about 350 kilometres above the Earth's surface.
Benoit Marcotte, director general of operations for the Canadian Space Agency, said the public should feel a great deal of pride about two Canadians being in space together.
"I think we should be proud that Canada is part of the manned space flight program," Mr. Marcotte said. "We can show that we are a high-technology country."...
And we are! Read the rest of this story - from a Canadian perspective, (CanCon) here at the National Post.
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