Soyuz Blasts New Crew to International Space Station Today (Video)

A new crew has blasted off to the International Space station in a Soyuz rocket. NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Luca Parmitano joined their Expedition 36 crewmates today.

Russian ground crews busily prepared the Soyuz spacecraft on Tuesday for the future members of the space station. Although Soyuz crews usually use a more traditional two-day rendezvous sequence, the Russians had been testing single-day launch-to-docking trajectories. The result is that the rocket ferried the astronauts to the space station faster than ever before, reducing the amount of time that the crew members were forced to spend cooped up in the spacecraft, according to CBS News.

"I would like to get where I'm going," said Nyberg in an interview with CBS News. "The facilities in the Soyuz aren't as comfortable as what is on the space station. So I'm all for just getting there."

In fact, the astronauts arrived at the space station in less than six hours. They then docked with the station's Rassvet module before entering the space station itself. The crew celebrated the success of the mission through a live feed with family members and mission officials gathered at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

While they're celebrating now, the crew has a rigorous schedule ahead of them. During the five-month timeframe of Expedition 36/37, the crew will conduct five spacewalks in order to prepare the complex for the installation of the Russian Multipurpose Laboratory Module. They're also planning a Nov. 9 spacewalk to actually take the Olympic torch outside.

In addition to spacewalks, they will also continue to support a diverse portfolio of research and technology experiments. One of these, called the Quantitative Computed Tomography (QCT) experiment, will evaluate countermeasures to prevent the loss of bone density during long-duration space missions. The experiment, which uses 3-D analysis to collect detailed information on the quality of astronauts' hip bones, also will increase understanding of osteoporosis on Earth. The mission is crucial if space agencies ever want to send astronauts to places like Mars in the future.

Currently, the crew members are settling in to their new life aboard the space station.

Want to see the video of the hatch opening to the space station? You can check it out here as the astronauts welcome crew members aboard and snap pictures.