Cargo ship makes delivery to space station

The next space station Alpha crew members are Astronaut Susan Helms, left, Cosmonaut Yury Usachev, center, and astronaut James Voss

(CNN) -- A unmanned Russian Progress supply ship docked with the international space station Alpha Wednesday morning.

The ship was loaded with supplies for the next space station crew, cosmonaut Yury Usachev and astronauts Jim Voss and Susan Helms.

The new crew will be carried up to the space station on the shuttle Discovery, which is scheduled for launch on March 8 from Kennedy Space Center.

As the supply ship docked with the space station, cosmonaut Yuri Gidzenko, a Soyuz pilot, waited in the Zvezda service module. Fellow cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev and U.S. commander Bill Shepherd also were standing by in the module.

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On Saturday, the space station residents made room for the arriving cargo ship by moving a Russian Soyuz spacecraft out of a docking port.

Gidzenko piloted the Soyuz as it backed out of the port on Zvezda, one of four habitable modules that comprise the fledgling station.

Gidzenko, Krikalev and Shepherd then flew to the other side of the station and docked at a port on the Zarya module.

The entire flight took about 30 minutes, NASA said.

Gidzenko, Shepherd and Krikalev will return to Earth on Discovery, having lived aboard the space station for more than four months.

Discovery also will carry the first experiments for the science laboratory Destiny. Shuttle Atlantis astronauts delivered the $1.4 billion module earlier this month. The addition made Alpha the roomiest spacecraft ever to fly.

The space station, a $100 billion venture of the United States, Russia, Canada, Europe and Japan, could be completed as early as 2006. It will boast more living space than a 747 jetliner and extend almost an acre.

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