CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The first astronauts in more than 40 years from India, Poland and Hungary arrived at the International Space Station on Thursday, ferried there by SpaceX on a private flight.
The crew of four will spend two weeks at the orbiting lab, performing dozens of experiments. They launched Wednesday from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
America's most experienced astronaut, Peggy Whitson, is the commander of the visiting crew. She works for Axiom Space, the Houston company that arranged the chartered flight.
Besides Whitson, the crew includes India's Shubhanshu Shukla, a pilot in the Indian Air Force; Hungary's Tibor Kapu, a mechanical engineer; and Poland's Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski, a radiation expert and one of the European Space Agency's project astronauts on temporary flight duty.
No one has ever visited the International Space Station from those countries before. The time anyone rocketed into orbit from those countries was in the late 1970s and 1980s, traveling with the Soviets.
Speaking in both English and their native languages, the new arrivals shared hugs and handshakes with the space station's seven full-time residents, celebrating with drink pouches sipped through straws. Six nations were represented: four from the U.S., three from Russia and one each from Japan, India, Poland and Hungary.
''We have so many countries at the same time on the space station,'' Kapu said, adding that seven of the 11 astronauts are first-time space fliers ''which also tells me how much space is expanding.''
Added Uznanski-Wisniewski: ''We will all try to do the best representing our countries.'' Shukla rated the experience so far as ''fantastic ... wonderful."
