Four countries and one space station equals busy place

Not only is it getting crowed in general up there in space but the International Space Station may need to advertise for an air traffic controller is the ISS gets any busier.

Right now there are four space capsules, including the newly arrived NASA shuttle Discovery on its last voyage, docked at the space station.

When NASA’s shuttle Discovery docked at the International Space Station today (Feb. 26), it made some space history: It marks the first time ever that spaceships from four different space agencies are linked together at the same time.

The historic moment occurred at 2:16 p.m. EST (1916 GMT), when Discovery arrived at a docking port at the front of the space station’s U.S.-built Harmony module. It joined two Russian Soyuz space capsules and three robotic space freighters (from Europe, Japan and Russia) that were also docked to the orbiting lab.

“That that’s about as many different visiting vehicles as you can imagine,” Discovery astronaut Alvin Drew radioed Mission Control in Houston before today’s docking.

via Space.com

image courtesy of Space.com