Expedition 44 fully staffed, Russia commits to station to 2024

Expedition 44 crew patch - Credit: NASA

The crew of Expedition 44 became fully staffed at six people when the Soyuz TMA-17M docked with the Russian Rassvet module of the International Space Station.

Launch occurred at 21:02 UTC (4:02 p.m. CDT) on  22 July 2015 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Onboard were NASAs Kjell Lindgren, Russia's Oleg Kononenko and Japan's Kimiya Yui.

Hatches were opened just under eight hours later at 4:56 UTC (11:56 p.m. CDT). Kononenko was the first to enter the space station to join the three currently residing onboard: Russia's Gannady Padalka and Mikhail Korniyenko and NASAs Scott Kelly. 

Kelly and Korniyenko are scheduled to be on the ISS till March 2016.

A little over a week later, Russia formally notified ISS partners that they will continue the partnership at least to 2024.

The United States and the Canadian Space Agency have already committed to 2024 leaving only the European space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency as the only partners yet to make a decision. ESA is expected to do so in late 2016.

Assessments of each of the components of the ISS show that the station could remain operational without any major funding increase for repairs to at least 2028.