Telemetry indicated that the stubborn array’s deployment mechanism had actuated and it was hoped that the maneuvering burns would jolt it open, but this did not occur. During the final approach to the station, Russian cosmonaut Max Surayev—commander of Expedition 41, alongside U.S. astronaut Reid Wiseman and Germany’s Alexander Gerst, who had been aboard since May—reported that the array remained undeployed and Samokutyayev completed a perfect docking at the space-facing (or “zenith”) Poisk module at 10:11 p.m. EDT, as the two vehicles passed high above the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of South America. Happily, the force imparted by docking appeared to cause the solar array to finally jolt itself open.

As Samokutyayev, Serova, and Wilmore joined Expedition 41 and restored the station’s crew to its full six-person strength, theirs was just the latest in a series of vehicles to call the ISS home. Already in place was Russia’s Progress M-24M, which had been docked at the Earth-facing (or “nadir”) port of the Pirs module since July, as well as Europe’s ATV-5, which had been attached to the aft longitudinal port of the Zvezda module since August, and SpaceX’s fourth Commercial Resupply Services Dragon mission (CRS-4), which had arrived and been berthed at the nadir port of the Harmony node a few days earlier, on 23 September. Interestingly, one of the CRS-4 payloads was a pair of critical Long Life Batteries (LLBs) for the U.S. Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMUs). Another pair was carried about Soyuz TMA-14M itself, allowing for a pair of U.S. spacewalks by Wiseman, Gerst, and Wilmore in October. These excursions were originally planned for August 2014, during Expedition 40, but were delayed when a failure was detected in one of the lithium-ion LLBs already aboard the space station.The first spacewalk, designated “U.S. EVA-27,” took place on 7 October, and featured Wiseman and Gerst spending six hours and 13 minutes outside the ISS. Supported by Wilmore, who acted as the “intravehicular” crewman and assisted the men with their suits, Wiseman and Gerst moved a failed pump module from a temporary to a long-term storage location, replaced a failed camera light, and installed a new relay assembly to provide power redundancy for the Mobile Transporter (MT), along which the 57.7-foot-long (17.6-meter) Canadarm2 robotic arm traverses between its various work sites. During the course of EVA-27, Wilmore was at the controls of Canadarm2, working from the multi-windowed cupola, but a few days later, on 15 October, his own opportunity came to perform his first career spacewalk. Teamed with Wiseman, he spent six hours and 34 minutes outside the station, replacing a failed Sequential Shunt Unit (SSU) and relocating cameras and equipment, in readiness of the scheduled mid-2015 arrival of the IDAs. A week later, on 22 October, cosmonauts Surayev and Samokutyayev headed outside the ISS for three hours and 38 minutes to remove and discard a scientific experiments package and a pair of unneeded rendezvous antennas, as well as collecting samples from the exterior of the Russian Orbital Segment (ROS) and conducting a comprehensive photo-documentation effort.