NASA - New Space Station Residents on Fast Track to Orbital Laboratory

WASHINGTON -- Three new Expedition 36 crew members lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:31 p.m. EDT, Tuesday, May 28, (2:31 a.m. Kazakh time, Wednesday, May 29) on a six-hour flight to the International Space Station.

NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency are scheduled to dock their Soyuz spacecraft with the orbiting laboratory at 10:16 p.m. This will be only the second time a crew will arrive at the space station less than a day after launch. Previously, the standard time from launch to docking was two days.

NASA Television will provide live coverage of the rendezvous and docking beginning at 9:30 p.m.

Nyberg, Yurchikhin and Parmitano will join NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin and Pavel Vinogradov, who arrived at the station in March. These six crew members will comprise Expedition 36 for the next several months.

The crew will have an especially busy schedule this summer. In June, Expedition 36 will welcome the arrival of the European Automated Transfer Vehicle-4 cargo spacecraft, followed at the end of the month by a spacewalk by Yurchikhin and Misurkin. In July, Cassidy and Parmitano will perform two spacewalks, followed soon afterword by the arrival of a Russian cargo ship. This summer, a Japanese HTV cargo spacecraft will deliver supplies to the space station, followed by two more spacewalks by Yurchikhin and Misurkin.

Expedition 36 also will add several key investigations to more than 1,600 experiments that have taken place so far aboard the station. The crew will examine ways to maintain bone health, yielding important information about how the human body adapts to space and improving understanding of osteoporosis and its countermeasures. They will continue research into how plants grow, leading to more efficient crops on Earth and improving understanding of how future crews could grow their own food in space. The crew also will test a new portable gas monitor designed to help analyze the environment inside the spacecraft and continue fuel and combustion experiments that past crews have undertaken. Studying how fire behaves in space will have a direct impact on future spaceflight and could lead to cleaner, more efficient combustion engines on Earth.

For information on the International Space Station or the Expedition 36 crew, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

To follow Twitter updates from Expedition 36 astronauts, visit:

http://twitter.com/AstroKarenN

and

http://twitter.com/astro_luca

For NASA TV streaming video, schedule and downlink information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

Station Crew Expands to Six Following Express Soyuz Flight

05.29.13

 

The newly arrived flight engineers and their Expedition 36 crewmates aboard the International Space Station speak with family members and spaceflight officials gathered at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Credit: NASA TV
The Soyuz TMA-09M carrying three new Expedition 36 crew members approaches the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA TV

The Soyuz TMA-09M carrying three new Expedition 36 crew members launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Photo credit: NASA TV
NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Luca Parmitano joined their Expedition 36 crewmates when the hatches between their Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft and the International Space Station opened at 12:14 a.m. EDT Wednesday. 

 The Soyuz carrying the three new Expedition 36 flight engineers docked with the station’s Rassvet module at 10:10 p.m. EDT Tuesday, completing its journey from the launch pad to the orbiting complex in less than six hours. The trio launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:31 p.m. (2:31 a.m. Wednesday, Baikonur time) to begin the accelerated four-orbit journey to the station. 

 Flight Engineer Chris Cassidy of NASA and Commander Pavel Vinogradov and Flight Engineer Alexander Misurkin of Russian Federal Space Agency, who arrived at the station March 28, welcomed the new crew members aboard their orbital home. All six crew members then participated in a welcome ceremony with family members and mission officials gathered at Baikonur.

 Expedition 36 will operate with its full six-person crew complement until September when Cassidy, Vinogradov and Misurkin return to Earth aboard their Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft. Their departure will mark the beginning of Expedition 37 under the command of Yurchikhin, who along with crewmates Nyberg and Parmitano will maintain the station as a three-person crew until the arrival of three additional flight engineers in late September. Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano are scheduled to return to Earth in November. 

 During the 5 ½-month timeframe of Expedition 36/37, the crew is scheduled to conduct five spacewalks to prepare the complex for the installation of the Russian Multipurpose Laboratory Module in December, as well as a Nov. 9 spacewalk to take the Olympic torch outside. The crew also will welcome the arrival of several visiting cargo vehicles: ESA’s “Albert Einstein” Automated Transfer Vehicle-4 in June, a Russian Progress cargo craft in July and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s H-II Transfer Vehicle-4 in August.

 Even with the challenges of managing visiting vehicle traffic and six spacewalks, the crew will continue supporting a diverse portfolio of research and technology experiments. Among the investigations that will be joining the list of approximately 1,600 station science studies conducted so far is the Hip Quantitative Computed Tomography (QCT) experiment, which will evaluate countermeasures to prevent the loss of bone density seen during long-duration space missions. The experiment, which uses 3-D analysis to collect detailed information on the quality of astronauts’ hip bones, also will increase understanding of osteoporosis on Earth. 

 The station’s crew will continue research into how plants grow, leading to more efficient crops on Earth and improving understanding of how future crews could grow their own food in space. The crew also will test a new portable gas monitor designed to help analyze the environment inside the spacecraft and continue fuel and combustion experiments that past crews have undertaken. Studying how fire behaves in space will have a direct impact on future spaceflight and could lead to cleaner, more efficient combustion engines on Earth.

 This is the second space mission for Nyberg, who holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering. She visited the station in 2008 as an STS-124 crew member aboard space shuttle Discovery on a mission to deliver and install pressurized module portion of the Kibo laboratory and its robotic arm. For Yurchikhin, this is his fourth spaceflight. He flew to the station in October 2002 aboard space shuttle Atlantis. He also participated in two long-duration missions aboard the station, first as an Expedition 15 crew member in 2007 and then as a member of Expedition 24/25 in 2010. Yurchikhin has performed five spacewalks and spent more than 371 days in space. Parmitano, a major in the Italian Air Force, is making his first spaceflight. Selected as an astronaut candidate by ESA in 2008, Parmitano was certified as an astronaut in 2011.

› View video of hatch opening 

› View video of launch
› View video of docking

› Watch the Expedition 36 crew prep for launch in Kazakhstan

› Read more about Expedition 36

NASA

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

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