NASA Television Covers Station Cargo Craft Departure And Arrival

Michael Curie

Headquarters, Washington                               

 

Kelly Humphries

Johnson Space Center, Houston

 

HOUSTON -- NASA Television will provide live coverage during a busy International Space Station traffic pattern, when one cargo spacecraft departs and another arrives.

The European Space Agency's "Johannes Kepler" Automated Transfer Vehicle-2 (ATV2) is scheduled to undock from the station's Zvezda service module port at 9:48 a.m. CDT on Monday, June 20, and will burn up in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.

ATV2, the second unpiloted European cargo ship, delivered seven tons of food and supplies and is supporting a series of reboosts to raise the station's orbit. It has been linked to the station since February. NASA TV will incorporate coverage of the undocking into the "ISS Update" hour, which will air at 9:30 a.m. Monday.

The next day, the Russian Progress 43 cargo ship will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 9:38 a.m. (8:38 p.m. Baikonur time), carrying nearly three tons of food, fuel and supplies for the six-person Expedition 28 crew. The launch will be part of the NASA TV "ISS Update" that day, which will air at 9 a.m. NASA TV will provide live coverage of the Progress docking beginning at 11 a.m. on Thursday, June 23.

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

For International Space Station information, visit

http://www.nasa.gov/station.

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Preparing for Launch

Launch pad engineers at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan are dwarfed by the gantry mechanisms at the base of the Soyuz TMA-02M rocket following its rollout to the pad on Sunday, June 5, 2011. The rocket is being prepared for launch June 8 to carry the crew of Expedition 28 to the International Space Station.

Image Credit: NASA/Carla Cioffi

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Expedition 28 Crew Departs Star City

Expedition 28 crew members--Flight Engineer Satoshi Furukawa, left, Soyuz commander Sergei Volkov, center, and Flight Engineer Mike Fossum--answer reporters' questions during a press conference held on the grounds of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, Wednesday, May 25, 2011 in Star City, Russia. The crew later departed for Baikonur, Kazakhstan, in preparation for their June launch to the International Space Station.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

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Return to Earth

The Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 27 Commander Dmitry Kondratyev and Flight Engineers Paolo Nespoli and Cady Coleman in a remote area southeast of the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on Tuesday, May 24, 2011. NASA Astronaut Coleman, Russian Cosmonaut Kondratyev and Italian Astronaut Nespoli are returning from more than five months onboard the International Space Station where they served as members of the Expedition 26 and 27 crews.

Photo Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

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Expedition 27 Crew And Capsule Land Safely In Kazakhstan

Stephanie Schierholz

Headquarters, Washington

 

Kelly Humphries

Johnson Space Center, Houston

WASHINGTON -- Expedition 27 Commander Dmitry Kondratyev and Flight Engineers Cady Coleman and Paolo Nespoli safely landed their Soyuz spacecraft on the Kazakhstan steppe Monday, wrapping up a five-month stay aboard the International Space Station.

The trio landed at 10:27 p.m. (8:27 a.m. on May 24 local time) at a site southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan. Kondratyev, the Soyuz commander, was at the controls of the spacecraft as it undocked at 5:35 p.m. EDT from the station's Rassvet module. Once the Soyuz was 600 feet away, Nespoli took the first still images and video of a space shuttle docked to the station. The orbiting laboratory had to rotate 130 degrees to provide an ideal view for the historic imagery.

Russian recovery teams were on hand to help the crew exit the Soyuz and adjust to gravity. Kondratyev will return to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, outside of Moscow, while NASA's Coleman and Nespoli of the European Space Agency will fly directly to Houston.

They launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Dec. 15, 2010. As members of the Expedition 26 and 27 crews, they spent 159 days in space, 157 of them aboard the station. They worked on more than 150 microgravity experiments in human research; biology and biotechnology; physical and materials sciences; technology development; and Earth and space sciences.

During the trio's mission, the station welcomed a quick succession of international space vehicles including the Japanese Kounotori2, or "white stork," H-II Transfer Vehicle 2; two Russian Progress cargo ships; the European Johannes Kepler Automated Transfer Vehicle-2; and space shuttles Discovery and Endeavour on their final flights. The shuttles delivered more than 15 tons of supplies necessary for working and living aboard the station, as well as the new cosmic ray detector, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.

A veteran of three space flights, Coleman has logged 179 days in space. Nespoli has chalked up 174 days in space on his two flights. Kondratyev completed his first space mission.

Expedition 28 Commander Andrey Borisenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency and Flight Engineers Ron Garan of NASA and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Samokutyaev remain aboard the station.

Three new Expedition 28 crew members, Soyuz Commander Sergei Volkov, NASA Flight Engineer Mike Fossum and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Flight Engineer Satoshi Furukawa, will launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in their Soyuz TMA-02M spacecraft at 3:15 p.m. on June 7 (2:15 a.m. Baikonur time June 8) and dock to the complex two days later.

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

For a schedule of upcoming flights to the station, visit http://www.nasa.gov/stationflights.

To view Coleman's and Garan's mission updates on their Twitter pages, visit http://www.twitter.com/Astro_Cady and http://www.twitter.com/Astro_Ron.

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