Expedition 39 Soyuz Landing
Expedition 39 Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio of NASA is helped out of the
Soyuz capsule just minutes after he and Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata of
the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin
of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) landed in their Soyuz TMA-11M
spacecraft near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan at 9:58 p.m. EDT on Tuesday,
May 13, 2014 (7:58 a.m. Wednesday, Kazakh time). Wakata, Tyurin and Mastracchio
returned to Earth after more than six months onboard the International Space
Station where they served as members of the Expedition 38 and 39 crews.
Image Credit: NASA/Bill
Ingalls
Three crew members from the International Space Station (ISS) returned to
Earth Tuesday after 188 days in space, during which they orbited Earth more than
3,000 times and traveled almost 79.8 million miles.
Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration
Agency, Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio of NASA and Soyuz commander Mikhail
Tyurin of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) touched down southeast of
the remote town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan at 9:58 p.m. EDT (7:58 a.m., May
14, in Dzhezkazgan).
Medical personnel examine International Space
Station Expedition 39 crew members (from left to right) Koichi Wakata of the
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Mikhail Tyurin of the Russian Federal Space
Agency and Rick Mastracchio of NASA following their safe landing in a Soyuz
capsule southeast of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan at 9:58 p.m. EDT May 13 (7:58
a.m. May 14 local time).
Image Credit: NASA TV
During Expedition 39, the crew participated in a variety of research, including a human immune system activation and suppression study and a protein crystal growth research study looking for proteins responsible for Huntington's disease and other neurodegenerative conditions. The crew also installed a new plant growth chamber designed to expand in-orbit food production capabilities.
One of several key research focus areas during Expedition 39 was human health
management for long duration space travel, as NASA and Roscosmos prepare for two
crew members to spend one year aboard the space station in 2015.
During their time aboard the orbiting laboratory, the trio welcomed three
cargo spacecraft. A Russian ISS Progress cargo vehicle docked to the station,
bringing tons of supplies, and another Progress craft conducted tests on an
upgraded automated rendezvous system. In January, Orbital Sciences' Cygnus
spacecraft arrived at the station as part of Orbital's first commercial resupply
mission. In April, SpaceX launched its Dragon spacecraft to the station for the
SpaceX-3 cargo resupply mission. Both capsules were loaded with cargo and
science experiments. This was Orbital's first of at least eight cargo flights to
the space station, and it was the third of at least 12 flights for SpaceX
scheduled through 2016 under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contract.
Mastracchio, Tyurin and Wakata arrived at the station Nov. 7 bearing the
torch used to light the Olympic flame at Fisht Stadium in Sochi, Russia, which
marked the start of the 2014 Winter Games in February.
During his time on the orbiting complex, Mastracchio ventured outside the
confines of the space station for three contingency spacewalks. The first two
were to remove and replace a faulty cooling pump, and the third to remove and
replace a failed backup computer relay box.
The space station is more than a scientific research platform. It also serves
as a test bed to demonstrate new technology. With the arrival of SpaceX-3, the
Expedition 39 crew unloaded new climbing legs for NASA's Robonaut 2 (R2)
humanoid robot. Designed to take over routine, dirty and potentially dangerous
tasks from astronauts, R2 will take its first steps toward mobility after the
legs are attached and tested in the coming months. Further upgrades and a
battery backpack, necessary for the robot to operate completely untethered, will
launch to the station later this year. Ground controllers using the station's
robotic arm also installed a new high-definition Earth-viewing camera system,
referred to as HDEV, on the outside of the Columbus lab. HDEV is comprised of
four commercially available HD cameras and streams online live video of Earth to
online viewers around the world.
Having completed his fourth space station mission, Mastracchio now has spent
228 days in space. Wakata has spent 348 days in space on four flights and served
as the first Japanese commander of the International Space Station. Tyurin has
accumulated 532 days in space on three flights, making him 13th on the all-time
endurance list.
Expedition 40 now is operating aboard the station, with Steve Swanson of NASA
in command of the orbiting laboratory. Swanson and his crewmates, Flight
Engineers Oleg Artemyev and Alexander Skvortsov of Roscosmos, will tend to the
station as a three-person crew until the arrival in two weeks of three new
crewmates: Reid Wiseman of NASA, Maxim Suraev of Roscosmos and Alexander Gerst
of the European Space Agency. Wiseman, Suraev and Gerst are scheduled to launch
from Kazakhstan May 28.
For more information on the International Space Station and its crews,
visit:
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NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegi
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