41st ISS Expedition Will Soon be Underway

The International Space Station (ISS) will soon be fully crewed with six astronauts and cosmonauts once more, enabling a full start of the 41st expedition. The current crew of three are expecting the arrival of the SpaceX CRS-4 Dragon today and soon-after will receive the next batch of crewmates with open arms.

The three last ISS crewmembers will be heading up the station on a Russian Soyuz rocket and Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft later this week, launching Thursday afternoon for a six-hour, four-orbit ride to the station's Poisk module. Soyuz Commander Alexander Samokutyaev and Flight Engineers Barry Wilmore and Elena Serova will join Expedition 41 Commander Max Suraev (Russia) and crewmembers Reid Wiseman (USA) and Alexander Gerst (Germany).

And while we're talking about the crew, it might be well worth follow Wiseman on Twitter. It was revealed earlier this August that he's quite the accomplished shutterbug, snapping some breathtaking vistas from the ISS just to keep himself entertained.

Earlier today, Gerst and Wiseman successfully grappled the SpaceX Dragon cargo ship CRS-4 using the station's robotic arm - a procedure the pair had been carefully practicing for on Monday.

#Dragon and #ISS racing into darkness just before @astro_alex grappled. pic.twitter.com/APQiBhaFFl

— Reid Wiseman (@astro_reid) September 23, 2014

With that cargo, the ISS will be receiving not only standard supplies for the start of a new expedition, but also new research equipment, the first stage of a rodent habitat, and even the first 3-D-Printer designed to function in microgravity.

When the rest of the crew arrives soon after Thursday's launch, the station should be fully up-and-running, but in the meantime, all the others can do is wait and prepare.

Gerst, for instance, worked throughout Monday inside Japan's Kibo laboratory activating gear for the Zebrafish Muscle experiment - an experiment that will determine if the muscle atrophy humans experience in microgravity can affect zebrafish as well, despite their unusual structure.

The rodent lab coming to the station is intended to study similar phenomena, in which the affects of microgravity still remains a mystery and health concern for astronauts and scientists alike.