The space crew made up of Fyodor Yurchikhin, crew commander, Karen Nyberg, NASA astronaut and Luca Parmitano, the European Space Agency astronaut arrived today at the International Space Station (ISS).

Fyodor Yurchikhin delivered a flash card with the Gazprom's Year of Ecology logo to the ISS. The flash card contains thousands of wildlife photos which were exhibited at the Golden Turtle international photo contest in Moscow this year. Photographers from Gazprom Group also took part in the contest. One of them – Danil Khusainov – became a laureate in the Human and Nature category.

The photos on the flash card are displayed in the slideshow mode.

Author of slideshow – Vladimir Medvedev, member of Union of Wildlife Photographers

Background

The Soyuz manned spacecraft successfully performed automatic docking with the International Space Station today at 6:10 am (Moscow time). The astronauts will stay onboard the ISS for 172 days.

The Golden Turtle photo contest is one of the main events in Russia for photographers who shoot wildlife. The contest has been held since 2006. In 2010 it became international and today it is among the three largest photo contests of wildlife around the world.