ISS Crew to Work on May Day

May Day holidays will be working days at the International Space Station /ISS/, the Russian mission control has told RIA Novosti.

The expedition 7 crew - Russian cosmonaut Yury Malenchenko, commander, and US astronaut Ed Lu, flight engineer - will be handed over the shift. Besides, the new crew has already embarked on research medical and biological experiments on the programme, said the mission control.

The expedition 6 crew consisting of Nikolai Budarin of Russia and American astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit are busy handing down the documents describing the condition of the ISS research equipment and piling materials that sum up their ISS stay on the Russian Soyuz TMA-1 spacecraft. It will land them somewhere near the town Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, at about 6 a.m. Moscow time on May 4, according to the mission control.

As early as in the evening of May 3, the sixth crew will leave the ISS. At 23.40 the crewmen will seal the hatches of the Soyuz TMA-1 to depart from the ISS at 2.40 a.m. on May 4 toward Earth.

Bowersox and Pettit will be the first American astronauts (besides space tourist Dennis Toto) to land in a Russian space vehicle.

The astronauts are positive the landing will proceed smoothly. Yury Malenchenko said the landing would be only a little less comfortable than as if it were made in a space shuttle, but safer.