New Team Arrives for Space Duty

An American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts moved into the international space station on Monday for a four-month stay.

For the first time in five months, an American was in charge again at space station Alpha. NASA and the Russian space agency are taking turns providing the commander.

Mission Control extended a warm welcome to astronaut Frank Culbertson, replacing cosmonaut Yuri Usachev as skipper.

“We’re thrilled to be here,” Culbertson said. “We will take very good care of it.”

Culbertson helped attach a cargo carrier to his new home that contained food, clothes, a sleeping bunk and science experiments. It was his first official duty at the orbiting outpost.

Culbertson drove the switches that locked the Italian carrier, named Leonardo, onto the space station. The carrier, packed with 7,000 pounds of gear, was lifted from space shuttle Discovery’s cargo bay by robot-arm operator Patrick Forrester.

It took longer than planned to hook up Leonardo, a $150 million cylindrical module making its second space flight. The astronauts had to wait for the proper lighting and then took their time to make sure the carrier was lined up perfectly.

Coincidentally, the installation took place as the linked shuttle and station soared more than 240 miles above Italy. The astronauts received a three-minute warning before they flew over Mount Etna so they could gaze down at the volcano.

“Excellent work on timing the . . . install to occur over Italy,” Mission Control told the astronauts. “I wish we had the national anthem here.”

The astronauts and cosmonauts entered Leonardo a few hours later and began unpacking. “Everything looks very, very clean inside,” Culbertson reported.

Once emptied, Leonardo will be loaded with trash, removed from the space station and returned to Earth for another flight. The module last flew in March, when it hauled up supplies for Usachev and his crew mates, Jim Voss and Susan Helms.

The three were dropped off in March for what should have been a four-month stay. But they ended up spending an extra month at the space station because of problems with the newly installed robot arm.

Monday was their 158th day in space. By the time they return to Earth aboard Discovery next week, they will have spent 167 days aloft.

Culbertson and his crew mates, Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Tyurin, won’t be back until December. They are the third crew to live aboard the space station.