You'd think that traveling at warp speed to the planet Nibiru would be the coolest thing in outer space, but for the Hollywood types who made "Star Trek Into Darkness," talking with a real astronaut on the International Space Station was way more awesome.

"I'll just act like this is a perfectly normal thing to be happening," Damon Lindelof, a writer and producer for the just-released movie, told NASA's Chris Cassidy during a Google+ Hangout presented on Thursday by the space agency and Warner Bros. "We are literally tickled pink to be talking to you right now."

The other "Star Trek" actors in on the Hangout — Chris Pine (who plays Captain James Kirk), John Cho (Sulu) and Alice Eve (who gets a healthy dose of screen time as Dr. Carol Marcus) — were just as taken. They laughed and hooted like fanboys when Cassidy let go of his microphone and took an upside-down spin in zero-G.

Pine said he loved the idea of mashing up fictional and real-life spaceflight: "It's great that our worlds can meet at some point in the middle and hopefully inspire people to do good things, and to explore."

The feeling was clearly mutual: Astronaut Mike Fincke, who served as space station commander in 2008-2009, said the "Star Trek" TV shows and movies have long inspired scientists, engineers and spacefliers. "We fall for it every time here at NASA," he said.

Fincke appeared in the final episode of the "Star Trek: Enterprise" TV series, and on Thursday he joked that he'd rather be in Hollywood: "Ever since I was 3 years old, I wanted to be a director and writer, but I failed director-writer school. Then I tried acting, and that didn't work out. So now I go on spacewalks." 

If Lindelof has anything to do with it, Fincke won't be the last astronaut to make the crossover to Hollywood. He promised Cassidy that he'd be welcome to a cameo role in a future "Star Trek" movie. "Maybe you could class up the joint a bit," Lindelof said.

Cassidy said the "Star Trek" crew would be welcome aboard the space station as well. He noted that there were currently a couple of vacancies in the U.S. segment of the station — due to the fact that one batch of crew members has just returned to Earth, and their replacements aren't due for launch until May 28. "We got two open beds," Cassidy joked. "The first two here get 'em."

You can watch the whole 56-minute Hangout while you're waiting for the next showing of "Star Trek Into Darkness," but here are a few of the highlights:

• When asked about last week's ammonia coolant leak at the station, Cassidy said he was surprised to see how quickly mission managers were able to plan a spacewalk to fix it. "It's not like you can rescue Spock from a volcano and push a button. It doesn't happen that way up here," he said. Cassidy said the episode illustrated how useful it is to have "garage-tinkerer" types aboard the station.
• Cassidy said ammonia contamination was one of the three emergency threats that the space station crew had to be prepared to deal with, along with an onboard fire or rapid decompression. That led Lindelof to warn the astronaut about the latest "Star Trek" super-villain. "You should watch out for Benedict Cumberbatch," he said. "He's very threatening, I understand."
• Cassidy said the thing that gets him the most about "Star Trek" and other space movies was the ease with which everyone walked around on spaceships, as if artificial gravity was nothing special. Even though weightlessness has its drawbacks, floating around in zero-G would make the movies much more interesting. "Trust me, it's a pretty cool thing to do this anytime you want," Cassidy said.
• The astronauts talked around a question that asked them to name their favorite "Star Trek" captain, but Fincke said his favorite name for a starship would be Enterprise (natch!). Fellow NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren went with the Starship Endurance, which pays tribute to the ship for Ernest Shackleton's famous Antarctic ordeal in 1914.
• Life aboard the space station tends to give astronauts the same optimistic view of the future that runs through the "Star Trek" saga, Cassidy said. From space, Earth seems so tranquil and peaceful. "There are no borders down there," Cassidy said. "You can't see a little yellow line painted on the green part."
• One of the questions sent in during the Hangout focused on a more mundane aspect of spaceflight: How do spacewalkers handle a sneeze? Cassidy admitted that could be a problem. "Once the helmet goes on, any schmutz that goes on there is just an impediment to seeing clearly," he said. The solution is to incline your head downward before the sneeze, so that the schmutz is directed below the face plate.

More about 'Star Trek' and spaceflight:

• Astronauts get a sneak peek at film
• Warp speed! It may actually be possible
• Gallery: Reality check for 'Trek' tech

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA

NASA astronaut (and quilter) Karen Nyberg looks out the window of the Japanese Kibo laboratory on the International Space Station in 2008.

When astronaut Karen Nyberg is launched to the International Space Station, she’ll bring something entirely new to the space frontier: the art of quilting.

"I enjoy sewing and quilting," she explained during a televised interview from Moscow. "I am bringing some fabric with me, and thread. I'm hoping to create something. I don't know what yet it will be — that's part of creativity. It comes with the feeling of the day. So I have the supplies at my hands to create, if I get the opportunity and the creative notion to do so."

When she's launched into space on May 28, she'll be taking four "fat quarters" with her (pieces of fabric that are 18 by 22 inches), along with some needles and thread. But up-cargo limitations and safety issues mean she can't take a sewing machine, an iron, paints, a rotary cutter or other common tools of quilters.

Stitching in zero-G
To do quilting in zero gravity, she'll have to brace herself somewhere so she and her fabrics don't float around, find some good light, and keep her thread and thread clippings under strict control so they don't float into someone's face and eyes.

Precision stitching will surely be a challenge for her too, since she, the fabric, and the thread will want to float free, not sit steady and still. As she explained in a recent tweet, "It will be great experiment controlling everything!"

K. Nyberg / NASA

Karen Nyberg created this quilt for her niece.

Though she's limited in the material and equipment she can bring into space, Nyberg can use fabric or patches from the discarded astronaut clothing already on board the space station — some of it quite colorful. As a rule, the space station crew members wear a flight suit for a week and then discard it. There are no laundry facilities aboard the space station, so the uniforms are generally added to the trash heap that builds up inside a Russian Progress resupply ship after it is emptied. Eventually, the Progress is jettisoned, and everything in it burns up in Earth's atmosphere.

The issue of obtaining sewing scraps from a readily available "rag bag" in orbit first came up in a face-to-face interview in Houston last month. She broke into a broad, excited smile: "Discarded clothing — fantastic idea!"

And although paints and dyes are forbidden on the space station, Nyberg pointed out that there are condiments aboard that can take their place, which might be used as decoration — ketchup, mustard and chili sauce can make for some interesting painting materials.

Down to Earth
The first quilt in space would be an exciting, unique and valuable item. Bringing a quilt back to Earth might be a problem, since Nyberg has a limited space allotment in the Soyuz capsule she'll be traveling in next November. But she hopes to bring at least some of her handiwork back with her.

Fortunately, there may be additional opportunities to bring her space handiwork down to Earth. Unmanned SpaceX Dragon cargo capsules are carrying supplies up to the space station, with the next flight scheduled in November. The Dragon has a large volume for returning cargo to Earth, and NASA and SpaceX should be able to find room for a quilt or two.

If Nyberg has access to a cosmic rag bag of discarded uniforms from many countries — the United States, Russia, Canada, Italy, Japan and others — think of what her fellow quilters back on Earth could do with such star-struck materials.  NASA could decide to recycle space-flown uniforms back to Earth someday, and distribute them to quilters as part of a citizen outreach project.

The International Space Station itself is already a patchwork quilt of hardware: equipment, life support systems and structural elements that have been fabricated in various nations and pieced together over more than a decade. As with quilting, the station's life support systems emphasize recycling and re-use.

Nyberg has not mentioned any designs for her quilts. She said that she's "counting on creativity when I get there.”  She has a sketch pad, a pencil and a pencil sharpener to draw out the ideas that come to her. Whether it follows a traditional design, or a new look dictated by cosmic imagination, whether it's simple or fancy, the first quilt in space will undoubtedly become one of those precious images we’ll have sewn into our culture.

More about space crafts:

• Spacey artists win crafty prizes
• New frontiers for shuttle souvenirs

NBC News space analyst James Oberg spent 22 years at NASA's Johnson Space Center as a Mission Control operator and an orbital designer. Alcestis Oberg is a science writer and quilt collector. The Obergs are co-authors of "Pioneering Space: Living on the Next Frontier."

Two spacewalking astronauts may have fixed an ammonia leak outside the International Space Station on Saturday, perhaps bringing the outpost's vital cooling system back up to full strength.

Clad in bulky spacesuits, NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn replaced a pump control box thought to be responsible for the leak of ammonia, which cools down the orbiting lab's systems. It looks like this fix did the trick, as no ammonia flakes were seen streaming into space when Mission Control turned on the newly installed gear.

"We're not seeing anything," Cassidy said at around 12:35 p.m. ET, several minutes after the pump was turned on. "No snow." [Emergency Spacewalk to Fix Space Station Leak in Photos]

NASA officials stopped short of declaring total victory, however, saying that time will tell if the fix holds.

"It will take some diagnostics, still, over the course of the next several days by the thermal systems specialists to fully determine that we have solved the problem of the ammonia leak," NASA spokesperson Rob Navias said during live mission commentary. "But so far, so good." 

An emergency spacewalk 
Cassidy and Marshburn floated outside the space station at 8:44 a.m. ET Saturday, beginning what officials described as a six-hour detective's investigation to find — and hopefully fix — the ammonia leak.

Cassidy, who led the spacewalk, reported seeing "no smoking gun" as he and Marshburn began their inspection of the old ammonia pump control box, one of several on the space station's far left segment, known as the Port 6 truss. It is part of the cooling system for the two wing-like solar arrays extending from the Port 6 segment.

Upon removing the box, the spacewalkers still saw no signs of ammonia flakes.

"It looks really, really clean, surprisingly so," Cassidy said while peering deep inside the box using what looked like a dentist's mirror.

NASA TV

NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy (striped spacesuit) holds an ammonia pump control box during a spacewalk to hunt for an ammonia leak outside the International Space Station on May 13, 2013. The spacesuit of astronaut Tom Marshburn can be seen behind him.

The ammonia leak was first spotted by space station astronauts last Thursday, when the crew reported seeing flakes of frozen coolant floating outside. They recorded video of the ammonia leak and sent it down to Mission Control for analysis.

While the leak posed no danger to the space station's crew, it could have impacted the amount of power available for daily operations on the orbiting laboratory if left unchecked, NASA officials said. So Cassidy and Marshburn were sent out on an emergency spacewalk to attempt a fix.

The roughly 48-hour turnaround made this the fastest spacewalk plan of its kind ever devised for a space station crew, mission managers have said.

By about 1:00 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT), a little more than four hours into the spacewalk, Cassidy and Marshburn were getting ready to head back to a space station airlock, where they must clean their spacesuits to make sure they don't bring any toxic ammonia into the orbiting lab.

A history of ammonia leaks
This is not the first time astronauts have had to tackle ammonia leaks in the space station's cooling system during a spacewalk.

Last year, astronauts Sunita Williams of NASA and Akihiko Hoshide of Japan performed a spacewalk to fix a leak that was also found on the Port 6 truss. That ammonia leak was in the same coolant loop as the current leak, but engineers do not yet know if the two leaks are related.

The station's Port 6 truss is the oldest piece of the space station's scaffolding-like backbone and carries two of the outpost's eight wing-like solar arrays. It launched in November 2000 and was originally installed on the station's roof, towering over the orbiting lap. In 2007, visiting shuttle astronauts relocated the P6 truss to its final location on the station's far left side.

This was the fourth spacewalk for both Marshburn and Cassidy, and the 168th total to support space station assembly and maintenance. Inside the International Space Station, commander Chris Hadfield of Canada and Russian cosmonauts Roman Romanenko, Alexander Misurkin and Pavel Vinogradov followed the spacewalkers' progress.

Today's spacewalk comes just two days before Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko are due to return to Earth to end their five-month mission in space.

The three men are due to leave the space station on Monday and land on the steppes of Kazakhstan in Central Asia. Those plans are still going forward, space station mission managers said.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik  and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook  and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

• Space Station Ammonia Leak Seen By Exterior Camera | Video
• Cosmic Quiz: Do You Know the International Space Station?
• The International Space Station: Inside and Out (Infographic)

This story was originally published on Sat May 11, 2013 3:00 PM EDT

Yuri Kadobnov / AFP - Getty Images

NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg climbs out of a Soyuz spacecraft mock-up at Russia's Star City cosmonaut training center on Tuesday. Nyberg is due to fly to the International Space Station in May, for a fare of $55.8 milllion. That price will rise to $62.7 million for 2014-2015, and $70.7 million for 2016-2017.

By Mike Wall, Space.com 

NASA has signed a new deal that will keep American astronauts flying on Russian spacecraft through early 2017 at a cost of $70.7 million per seat — about $8 million more per astronaut than the previous going rate.

The $424 million deal, which was announced Tuesday, is good for six seats aboard Russia's Soyuz space capsules. Under the agreement, Soyuz vehicles will now ferry NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station through 2016, with return and rescue services extending until June 2017. The previous contract provided Soyuz flights for NASA astronauts through 2015, at a cost of roughly $62.7 million per seat.

NASA has been dependent on the Soyuz since the retirement of its space shuttle fleet in July 2011. The agency is currently encouraging American private spaceflight firms to develop their own astronaut taxis under its Commercial Crew Program. [The Top 10 Private Spaceships]

NASA had hoped that at least one homegrown crew-carrying spaceship would be up and running by 2015, but Congress' failure to fully fund Commercial Crew has made that impossible, agency chief Charles Bolden said. NASA officials are now targeting 2017 for the first American astronauts to fly on commercial spacecraft.

Lawmakers approved $489 million and $406 million for commercial crew in the last two years, respectively, far short of the $830 million and $850 million laid out in President Barack Obama's federal budget requests.

"Because the funding for the president's plan has been significantly reduced, we now won't be able to support American launches until 2017," Bolden wrote in a blog post. "Even this delayed availability will be in question if Congress does not fully support the president's fiscal year 2014 request for our Commercial Crew Program [$821 million], forcing us once again to extend our contract with the Russians."

The top three contenders to fly NASA astronauts to and from the space station are SpaceX, Sierra Nevada Corp. and Boeing. SpaceX is working on a manned version of its Dragon capsule; Boeing is also developing a capsule, called the CST-100, while Sierra Nevada is building a space plane called Dream Chaser.

NASA is also looking to the private sector to fill the space shuttle's cargo-carrying shoes. The agency has signed billion-dollar deals with two American firms, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp., to fly robotic resupply missions to the orbiting lab.

SpaceX has already completed two of its contracted 12 missions using its Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket. Orbital test-flew its Antares rocket for the first time earlier this month and is expected to fly a demonstration mission to the space station with Antares and a spacecraft called Cygnus within the next few months.

The new contract with Russia fully covers Soyuz operations and support, including flight training and launch preparations, NASA officials said. Soyuz spacecraft currently fly not only Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts, but also spacefliers from Canada, Japan and Europe.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

• Russia's Manned Soyuz Space Capsule Explained (Infographic)
• Soyuz Launches And Docks With International Space Station | Video
• Soyuz Rocket Launches 'Express' Trip to Space Station (Photos)

Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Canada's new printed-polymer $5 bill has received the country's highest sendoff, altitude-wise, from International Space Station commander Chris Hadfield. Tuesday's currency-unveiling ceremony in space was just the latest in a series of achievements that have drawn attention to Canada's best-known spaceflier.

Hadfield already has made his mark as a photographer, a musician and composer, and an explainer of outer-space phenomena ranging from crying to vomiting in zero-G. There's a reason why the Bank of Canada turned to him to introduce one of the last currency notes to be converted to counterfeit-resistant polymer: One side of the $5 bill celebrates Canada's contributions to space exploration, including the space station's Canadarm2 and DEXTRE robot.

"I just want to tell you how proud I am to be able to see Canada's achievements in space highlighted on our money," Hadfield told Canadian officials via a space-to-Earth video link. Hadfield said the pictures played to Canada's strength in space robotics.

As Hadfield spoke, he plucked a bill from the wall of the station's Destiny laboratory and set it spinning in zero gravity in front of the camera. The other side of the bill has a less spacey theme: It features a portrait of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who was Canada's prime minister from 1896 to 1911.

Bank of Canada spokeswoman Julie Girard said the outer-space ceremony was "quite a few months in the making." The polymer note was flown up to the space station with Hadfield back in December, and held in reserve for Tuesday's ceremony. "We wanted to be the first to unveil a bank note in space," she told NBC News.

Bank of Canada

This rendition of the Canadian $5 bill shows Canadarm2 and DEXTRE in more detail. The bank note is to be issued in November.

Canada's new $10 note, which commemorates the country's rail system, was unveiled at the same time in Ottawa. The $5 and $10 bills will complete Canada's conversion to polymer-based currency, tricked up with transparent areas and hologram markings to make them harder to counterfeit. The Bank of Canada says these notes should last two to three times longer than the country's cotton-based paper bank notes — and when they wear out, they can be traded in and recycled.

The new notes won't be rolled out to the Canadian public until November. That'll provide enough lead time for training clerks and law enforcement officials to get familiar with the bills. Hadfield will be back on Earth long before November: He's due to get on board the next Soyuz capsule leaving the station on May 14, alongside NASA's Tom Marshburn and Russia's Roman Romanenko.

So what happens to Hadfield's $5 bill? Girard said the astronaut will bring the note down with him, and it will eventually be put on exhibit at the Bank of Canada's currency museum.

Several of Hadfield's priceless photographs of Earth from space are already on exhibit in our latest Month in Space Pictures slideshow. Check out the pictures, plus this bonus 3-D picture of Mars from NASA's Curiosity rover. The 3-D photo was featured in our "Where in the Cosmos" contest on Facebook. Cosmic Log fan Ryan Meader was the first to report that the mountain featured in the picture is referred to as Mount Sharp (by Curiosity's science team) and Aeolis Mons (by the International Astronomical Union).

Meader says he's a long-time reader: "I think it's fair to say that I'm on the hard-core passionate end of the spectrum — so it was to my great delight that I got the jump on this little contest," he wrote.

We're delighted to send Meader a free pair of red-blue 3-D glasses, compliments of Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope project — and we'll have a few more spectacles to give away in the weeks to come. So click on the "like" button for the Cosmic Log Facebook page and get ready for the next "Where in the Cosmos" contest.

Slideshow: Month in Space: April 2013

Chris Hadfield / CSA

Feast your eyes on an alligator-like mountain range and other curiosities seen from outer space in April 2013.

Launch slideshow

NASA / JPL-Caltech

A stereo image from NASA's Mars Curiosity rover shows the terrain between the robot and Mount Sharp (a.k.a. Aeolis Mons) inside Gale Crater. Wear red-blue glasses to get the 3-D effect, and don't dwell too much on the hardware in the foreground. Trying to focus in on that part of the picture can make you go cross-eyed.

More about Canada's best-known spaceflier:

• Chris Hadfield's tribute to Boston bomb victims
• What happens to a washcloth in space?
• NBC News archive on Chris Hadfield

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA TV

Russian cosmonauts Roman Romanenko (bottom) and Pavel Vinogradov float outside the International Space Station on Friday during a spacewalk.

By Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. —A 59-year-old Russian cosmonaut became the world's oldest spacewalker Friday, joining a much younger cosmonaut's son for a little maintenance work outside the International Space Station.

Pavel Vinogradov, a cosmonaut for two decades, claimed the honor as he emerged from the hatch with Roman Romanenko. But he inadvertently added to the booming population of space junk when he lost his grip on an experiment tray that he was retrieving toward the end of the 6½-hour spacewalk.

The lost aluminum panel — 18 inches by 12 inches (45 by 30 centimeters) and about 6½ pounds (3 kilograms) — contained metal samples. Scientists wanted to see how the samples had fared after a year out in the vacuum of space. 

Otherwise, the spacewalk went well, with the spacewalkers installing new science equipment and replacing a navigation device needed for the June arrival of a European cargo ship.

Collecting the experiment tray was Vinogradov's last task outside.

The tray drifted toward the solar panels of the main Russian space station compartment, called Zvezda, Russian for Star. Flight controllers did not believe it struck anything, and the object was not thought to pose a safety hazard in the hours and days ahead. 

"That's unfortunate," someone radioed in Russian.

Another panel of similar experiments will be collected on a future spacewalk.

This was the first of eight spacewalks to be conducted this year, most of them by Russians. Two will be led by NASA this summer. 

Until Friday, the oldest spacewalker was retired NASA astronaut Story Musgrave, who was 58 when he helped fix the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993.

Romanenko, 41, is a second-generation spaceflier who's following in his father's bootsteps. Retired cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko performed spacewalks back in the 1970s and 1980s. This was the son's first experience out in the vacuum of space.

Vinogradov made his seventh spacewalk; he ventured into a dark, ruptured chamber at Russia's old Mir space station in 1997 following a cargo ship collision. He arrived late last month for a six-month stay at the space station and will turn 60 aboard the orbiting complex in August.

The spacewalkers joked as they toiled 260 miles (420 kilometers) above the planet.

"I'm afraid of the darkness," one of them said in Russian as the space station passed over the night side of Earth.

Among the newly installed equipment was a Russian experiment called Obstanovka, which will study plasma waves and the effect of space weather on Earth's ionosphere. Vinogradov and Romanenko also replaced a faulty retro-reflector device, a navigational aid that will help guide in the European Space Agency's Albert Einstein cargo ship during an automated docking that is scheduled in June.

Russian flight controllers outside Moscow oversaw Friday's action. The four other space station residents monitored the activity from inside; Canadian commander Chris Hadfield drew the short straw and had to work on a balky toilet. 

This report includes additional information from NASA. Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. 

This story was originally published on Fri Apr 19, 2013 11:28 AM EDT

A NASA astronaut and his two Russian crewmates made the fastest-ever trip to the International Space Station on Thursday, arriving less than six hours after launch.

In the past, it's taken two days for Soyuz spaceships to make the trip from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. But mission planners worked out a more efficient procedure that made it possible for the Soyuz to catch up with the station in just four orbits, compared with more than 30 orbits under the previous flight plan.

Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin, along with NASA's Chris Cassidy, rocketed into orbit from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:43 p.m. ET Thursday (2:43 a.m. Friday local time). "The spacecraft is nominal, we feel great," Vinogradov, the spacecraft's commander, reported as the rocket ascended to orbit.

NASA launch commentator Josh Byerly hailed Thursday's flight, saying that the crew was "on the fast track" to the station.

The six-hour trip lasted roughly as long as an airplane flight from Seattle to Miami. NASA officials say the fast-rendezvous procedure minimizes the time that crew members spend in the Soyuz's close quarters and gets them to the much roomier space station in better shape. The down side is that the three spacefliers had to spend most of the trip sitting elbow to elbow in bulky spacesuits — which might strike a familiar chord for Seattle-to-Miami fliers.

The fast-track technique relies on a complicated round of orbital choreography that was tested three times over the past eight months, using unmanned Russian Progress cargo ships.

Last week, the space station raised its orbit by about a mile and a half (2.5 kilometers) to put it in the correct position for intercepting the Soyuz. The Soyuz had to be launched at just the right moment, to get into just the right orbit at just the right distance behind the station. To catch up with the station at the right time, the Soyuz had to execute a precisely timed series of thruster firings — a task that was made easier by an upgrade to the spacecraft's automated navigation system.

"From a technical point of view, we feel pretty comfortable with this," Cassidy said at a pre-launch news briefing. "All of the procedures are very similar to what we do in a two-day process, and we've trained it a number of times."

Despite all the training, there were some nail-biting moments. At one point during the Soyuz's approach, a Russian mission controller told Vinogradov, "You really need to stay calm and cool." Vinogradov followed through on the advice, guiding the Soyuz to its targeted position at 10:28 p.m. ET.

Two hours after docking, the hatches between the two spacecraft were opened, and the Soyuz trio floated through to greet three other spacefliers who have been living aboard the station since December: Canadian commander Chris Hadfield, NASA's Tom Marshburn and Russia's Roman Romanenko.

"Hey, is anyone home?" Vinogradov joked. The new arrivals received a round of hugs and congratulations, exchanged warm words with loved ones back on Earth via the station's communication link, and finally settled down for rest at the end of a long, long day.

Vinogradov has been on two previous long-duration space missions — to Russia's Mir space station in 1997-1998, and to the International Space Station in 2006. Cassidy, a Navy SEAL, has been to the station once before, during a mission on the shuttle Endeavour in 2009. This is the first spaceflight for Misurkin.

The new crew members will spend five and a half months aboard the orbital outpost. They'll take part in station upkeep as well as scores of scientific experiments. Up to seven spacewalks are planned during their stay, with the first one coming up next month. The next changing of the guard comes in mid-May, when Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko are due to return to Earth.

More about the Soyuz trip:

• Space station shifts orbit for fast trip
• Space trip offers speed, but not comfort
• Fast trip to station is like riding a train

This report includes information from The Associated Press.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This story was originally published on Thu Mar 28, 2013 4:47 PM EDT

Ramil Sitdikov / AFP - Getty Images

NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy gets his spacesuit checked prior to Thursday's launch to the International Space Station. Straps bind Cassidy's knees close to his chest, in the position he'll have to maintain during most of the six-hour trip.

The speedier ride that three spacefliers are taking into orbit on Thursday will get them aboard the roomy International Space Station a lot sooner than on previous Soyuz space missions. It will lower the demand on expensive support teams back on Earth. But there's also an uncomfortable aspect to the shorter flight plan.

That aspect has to do with the Russian-made emergency pressure suits that crew members wear for launch aboard the Soyuz spacecraft. In the past, spacefliers put on the suits several hours before launch, and wore them for about three hours in flight — long enough to perform the early rocket maneuvers. Then they took off the suits and put them away until docking, two days later. During most of the trip, the travelers could stretch out in the orbital module, a roomier area of the Soyuz spacecraft.

The situation is different for NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin and Pavel Vinogradov, the newest crew members to head for the space station. Their trip is taking six hours rather than two days, thanks to a more exacting strategy for orbital navigation. The Soyuz launch from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan is scheduled for 4:43 p.m. ET, and arrival at the station is set for 10:31 p.m. ET.

Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station manager, said the flight plan has the benefit of reducing the "amount of time the crew has to spend in a small environment before they get to the ISS." But that six-hour trip will be more intense. 

Long stretch in the suits
The trio will be wearing their Sokol pressure suits as an essential safety measure, to ensure against the kind of catastrophe that killed three unprotected cosmonauts in 1971 when their cabin suffered an air leak. But the suits are notoriously uncomfortable: They're designed to fit snugly into the tight crew seats, where knees are shoved halfway up to the chest. Arm mobility is restricted to being able to hold a stick to poke critical controls. Oxygen is fed into the suits via short hoses from a nearby console.

It takes hours to remove the suits and clean them, and at least an hour to put them back on and verify pressurization. There's not time for all that during a six-hour trip. As a result, the crew members will have to wear the suits for a much longer period that begins before launch and doesn't end until after docking.

"They are definitely going to have to go to a very tolerant mental system to do this," one former NASA astronaut told NBC News. The spaceflier, who has experience with Soyuz hardware and the Sokol spacesuit, spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak out publicly.

"My first thought was, 'Oh my God, how will they do this!!!" the astronaut said in an email. "If they let the confined/claustrophobic feeling in, it can escalate quickly. If they do not get excellent cooling, which is hard to get, curled up in the seat, it could be very bad. At best this will be terribly uncomfortable to say the least, and I would expect worse, especially given that Cassidy is pretty tall. ... My personal thinking is that this is going too far and even if they get through it this time, I would not think it reasonable as a general technique."

Not 'a big deal'
Cassidy told CollectSpace's Robert Pearlman in an interview that he could tolerate the trip.

"I'm a little bit taller than is comfortably seated in the Soyuz” Cassidy acknowledged, but he said he and his crewmates planned to ease out of their seats and straighten their legs while continuing to wear their spacesuits. "After a couple of hours strapped into that seat tightly, it is really, really nice to stretch your legs out," he explained.

Several retired astronauts seconded Cassidy's view.

"I don't really remember suit comfort being a big deal on my flight," Ed Lu, who was the first American to ride a Soyuz to the space station after the 2003 Columbia disaster, told NBC News via email. "We were out of our suits after 2 revs [revolutions], so what we are talking about here is just an additional 2 revs."

Leroy Chiao, who rode a Soyuz to orbit and back in 2004, agreed in an email: “While the position one is required to be in for being strapped in the seat is not comfortable, I would opt for day-1 rendezvous. Once in orbit, the crew can loosen their straps a bit and move their legs a little. Shifting around helps relieve some of the discomfort."

It’s not just a matter of NASA employees loyally proclaiming their agreement. Private spaceflight participant Greg Olsen, who took his Soyuz trip in 2005, voiced a similar view in an email: “Strictly speaking for myself, I would have been willing to keep the Sokol suit on for a 10-hour period if we docked at the station in that time. It would be more uncomfortable, but not unbearable, to do this.”

Space toiletry
Cassidy told CollectSpace that the Russians found a way for crew members to relieve themselves while still inside the suits. "We wind up being in the vehicle for a very, very long time, and people just need to use the toilet eventually," he said, "so we'll open the hatch and have access to the [orbital module] and be allowed to take our suits not completely off, but enough to do any business we need to take care of."

The nature of this "relief tube" remains obscure. Although cosmonauts are often photographed posing in front of their transfer bus for a re-enactment of Soviet space pioneer Yuri Gagarin's "peeing on the tires" ceremony, it's hard to see how they are actually attaining access to allow for urination. Demonstration videos of cosmonauts donning Sokol suits in orbit show clear views of the crotch area, and no openings are visible in the appropriate anatomical regions.

Olsen described the only available method for such relief that he ever was offered. "We all wear 'Huggie' diapers and most have peed at least once shortly after launch,” he said. "The Russians give everyone enemas, so that's not an issue, even for the two-day flight, in most cases."

Perhaps the long stretch in a spacesuit will bring the full truth to light: How do you get relief in orbit?

Update for 6:45 p.m. ET: It turns out that the Sokol suit does indeed provide an opening for spacefliers who have to go, but it’s hidden modestly behind a fabric flap. Here’s how it’s described on Suzy McHale’s RuSpace website: 

"There is a 'big appendix' in the envelope (for the spacesuit donning) and a 'small appendix' in the lower part (for urination). The 'appendices' are made of rubberized cotton fabric and are pressurized by means of two rubber tight plaits. ... In the 'small appendix' area there is a physiological opening in the shell which is secured by lacing it up and covered by a fabric flap with Velcro fastener."

More about the Soyuz mission:

• New space station crew set for 6-hour ride
• Space station shift makes fast trip possible
• Fast trip to space station is like riding a train

NBC News space analyst James Oberg spent 22 years at NASA Mission Control, where he carried the title of Rendezvous Guidance and Procedures Officer — RGPO, pronounced "Arr-Jeep-O." In that capacity he sat in the center of Mission Control's front row, down in the legendary "trench" of space maneuvering specialists.

This story was originally published on Thu Mar 28, 2013 3:11 PM EDT

Roscosmos / NASA TV

A Russian recovery team opens up the hatch of a Soyuz spacecraft after its landing in Kazakhstan early Saturday local time. The capsule carried a U.S.-Russian crew back to Earth from the International Space Station.

By Miriam Kramer
Space.com

A Soyuz spacecraft has safely landed on the frigid steppes of Kazakhstan, returning an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts to Earth after a nearly five-month mission on the International Space Station.

The Soyuz space capsule touched down at about 11:11 p.m. ET Friday, which was early Saturday at the landing site. The spacecraft brought NASA astronaut Kevin Ford and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin home after 142 days in space. The trio was greeted by freezing temperatures after exiting the spacecraft.

"They've landed. Expedition 34 is back on Earth," NASA spokesman Rob Navias said during live commentary.

Originally, the international crew was to leave the orbiting laboratory on Thursday, but freezing rain and foggy weather on the ground prevented them from returning home. Weather conditions improved on Friday, leading to a smooth undocking; however, a bank of clouds hampered visibility in the landing zone, complicating the Russian search and recovery team's task.

During their stay aboard the station, the three spacefliers orbited the Earth 2,304 times, traveling nearly 61 million miles (98,169,984 kilometers). This was Novitskiy and Tarelkin's first trip to space, and the second for Ford. [See photos from Expedition 34 space mission]

The three crew members were on board to see the docking of the unmanned Dragon capsule — owned and operated by private spaceflight firm SpaceX — at the beginning of March. A month before, the crew participated in the docking and undocking of a Russian Progress supply capsule.

NASA TV

The International Space Station is seen in a video view from a departing Russian Soyuz craft.

Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin leave three other crew members on board the space station. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn said their goodbyes to the departing trio earlier in the day. Ford passed the commander's role to Hadfield, putting a Canadian in charge of the station for the first time.

Hadfield, Romanenko and Marshburn will not be the sole residents of the station for long. Cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov, Alexander Misurkin and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy are expected to arrive at the station on March 28. If all goes as planned, it will mark the first time a Soyuz capsule has delivered a station crew to the International Space Station in one day. Russia's Federal Space Agency tested the one-day flight profile during unmanned Progress cargo ship deliveries to the space station.

NASA has relied on Russia's Soyuz capsules to transport astronauts to and from low Earth orbit since the retirement of the agency's shuttle program in 2011. In the future, NASA officials plan to use on privately built spacecraft to carry people and cargo to and from the space station.

The $100 billion laboratory was built by space agencies representing Japan, Canada, Europe, the United States and Russia. International crews of astronauts have occupied the station continuously since 2000.

Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

• Space Station's Expedition 35 Mission in Photos
• Russia's Manned Soyuz Space Capsule Explained (Infographic)
• What It's Like to Ride Russia's Soyuz Spaceship | Video

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

This story was originally published on Fri Mar 15, 2013 8:40 PM EDT