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:
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Station Crew Expands to Six Following Express Soyuz Flight
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.
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com
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
