Three-man international crew – and 20 pieces of Lego – reach space station

A Russian Soyuz spaceship safely delivered a three-man international crew, including Denmark’s first astronaut, to the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday. It arrived a day after having had to maneuver to avoid colliding with space debris. “The Soyuz has now successfully docked at the ISS,” a NASA TV presenter said after it reached the 15-nation orbiting outpost. Mogensen, dubbed Denmark’s Gagarin after the Soviet cosmonaut and first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, took Danish-made exercise bikes and 20 of Danish toymaker Lego’s plastic figures into orbit.

Mogensen will wear a tailor-made SkinSuit to alleviate back problems and use a mobile headset that allows ground control to look over his shoulder as he works

European Space Agency

The Soyuz TMA-18M blasted off to the $100bn space laboratory from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday to take Russian Commander Sergei Volkov, Kazakh cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetov and Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen into orbit. It took two days to reach the ISS, rather than a six-hour approach usually taken in recent years after the altitude of the ISS was lifted in July to avoid space debris. Mogensen and Aimbetov are due to return to Earth on September 12 with veteran Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, who has racked up a total of 878 days in space, more than any other person.

Science