New Space Station Crew Members Launch from Kazakhstan

Michael Curie

Headquarters, Washington                                        

 

Kelly Humphries

Johnson Space Center, Houston

HOUSTON -- NASA astronaut Mike Fossum, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov and Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa launched to the International Space Station at 3:12 p.m. CDT Tuesday (2:12 a.m. local time, Wednesday) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Fossum, Furukawa and Volkov - the Soyuz commander- are scheduled to dock their spacecraft with their new home at 4:22 p.m. Thursday, June 9. They will join Expedition 28 commander Andrey Borisenko and flight engineer Alexander Samokutyaev of the Russian space agency and Ron Garan of NASA. The trio has been aboard the station since April 6.

On Thursday, coverage of the Soyuz docking will begin on NASA Television at 3:30 p.m. NASA TV coverage of the hatches opening and the welcoming ceremony aboard the orbiting laboratory will begin at 8:30 p.m.

The six-person crew will continue the uninterrupted presence of humans on the station since Nov. 2, 2000, conducting expanded scientific research and station maintenance activities. The station residents also will welcome the crew of the last space shuttle flight, Atlantis' STS-135 mission, targeted to launch July 8. The shuttle will deliver critical supplies in the Italian-built Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module and support spacewalks by Fossum and Garan to retrieve a failed cooling system pump module, which Atlantis will return to Earth for analysis.

Garan, Borisenko and Samokutyaev, who launched to the station April 4, will return to Earth in September. Before departing, Borisenko will hand over command of the station to Fossum for Expedition 29, which begins when the Soyuz TMA-21 undocks.

NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin will join Fossum, Volkov and Furukawa to complete the Expedition 29 crew in September.

Fossum will blog about his experiences while aboard the space station. His first blog entry will be posted later today at http://blogs.nasa.gov.

For NASA TV streaming video, schedule and downlink information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.

For more information about Expedition 29 and the space station, visit http://www.nasa.gov/station.

To follow Twitter updates from Expedition 28-29 crew member Garan, visit http://twitter.com/Astro_Ron.

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Endeavour Docks with International Space Station

At 6:14 a.m. EDT, Commander Mark Kelly backed space shuttle Endeavour into pressurized mating adapter 2 on the International Space Station’s Harmony node. The two spacecraft were flying about 220 miles up above and east of Chile at the time they docked.

The shuttle and station crews will open hatches and hold the traditional welcome ceremony at about 8:36 a.m. Endeavour’s crew will be working with Expedition 27 Commander Dmitry Kondratyev and Russian Flight Engineers Andrey Borisenko and Alexander Samokutyaev, Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency, and NASA's Cady Coleman and Ron Garan.

The first robotic activity will be about 45 minutes after hatches are open, when the spare parts carrier, Express Logistics Carrier 3, will be transferred from the shuttle's robotic arm to the station’s robotic arm then installed on the port side of the station's truss structure. Among items on it are a spare ammonia tank, a high-pressure oxygen tank, two S-band antennas and 10 circuit breakers.

Mission Specialists Mike Fincke and Drew Feustel will transfer the spacesuits and spacewalk equipment over to the station’s Quest airlock and begin setting up for the first spacewalk, scheduled for Friday.

Today’s Mission Status Briefing is set for 9 a.m. and will air live on NASA TV and www.nasa.gov/ntv.

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Space Station Crew Hosts News Conference To Celebrate 50th Anniversary Of Human Spaceflight And 30th Of Space Shuttle

Stephanie L. Schierholz

Headquarters, Washington                                   

 

James Hartsfield

Johnson Space Center, Houston

WASHINGTON -- The International Space Station partner agencies will commemorate the golden anniversary of human spaceflight and 30 years of space shuttle flights on Tuesday, April 12, with a news conference featuring the six crew members in orbit 220 miles above Earth.  The 30-minute news conference will begin at 11:45 a.m. EDT and will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website.

Accredited media representatives may participate from NASA Headquarters in Washington, the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Kennedy Space Center in Florida and international partner locations. To attend U.S. journalists must contact their respective NASA newsroom by 4 p.m. on Monday, April 11.

Expedition 27, the 27th crew to live and work aboard the station, consists of Commander Dmitry Kondratyev, his cosmonaut colleagues Andrey Borisenko and Alexander Samokutyaev, NASA astronauts Cady Coleman and Ron Garan, and European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli.

The crew is conducting scientific research, performing station maintenance and preparing for the arrival of space shuttle Endeavour and its six astronauts, scheduled to launch at 3:47 p.m. on April 29 from Kennedy. During the STS-134 mission, the crew will install the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a new science instrument that will search for dark matter and the origins of our universe. The astronauts also will deliver supplies and spare parts and complete four spacewalks to service and outfit the orbiting outpost.

For more information about the station and its crew, visit http://www.nasa.gov/station.

For more information about the upcoming STS-134 mission, visit http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle.

For NASA TV downlink, schedule and streaming video information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.

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