How are you greeted when you show up to a new work site? Firm handshakes all around? Things are a little different up in space where the camaraderie among astronauts is on display in a delightful NASA video showing the arrival of three new crew members to the International Space Station.
NASA posted the video Tuesday showing the greeting process, which is essentially a gauntlet of warm hugs. Each astronaut floats by, shares an embrace and moves on to the next crew member until they’re all aboard.
Scott Tingle from NASA, Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos and Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency arrived at the ISS this morning to join the three current crew members, Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba of NASA and Alexander Misurkin of Roscosmos.
The arrival marks the start of Tingle and Kanai’s first visit to the space station, while Shkaplerov is on his third mission and has now logged over 365 days in space.
The hug gauntlet was followed by an official welcoming ceremony. The current crew has around 250 science investigations on tap over the next six months in space. The three new members will stay on the ISS until their scheduled return to Earth in June 2018.
