Thu, May 28, 2009
Live Briefing From Space on June 1
It may get just a bit crowded, even
with the recent expansion. The International Space Station crew is
awaiting the arrival of three new members that will usher in an era
of six-person crews aboard the orbiting laboratory. Russian
cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, European Space Agency astronaut Frank De
Winne and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Bob Thirsk launched
aboard a Soyuz spacecraft Wednesday morning from the Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The Soyuz is scheduled to dock with the station Friday at 8:36
a.m. EDT. The trio will join station Commander Gennady Padalka and
Flight Engineers Mike Barratt of NASA and Koichi Wakata of the
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to form the Expedition 20
crew. It will mark the first time all five partner agencies are
represented by astronauts on the station at the same time.
The expanded crew of the International Space Station will
discuss the start of six-person operations in a news conference
June 1st at 9:25 am. The news conference will be broadcast live on
NASA Television and streamed on the NASA Web site.
Meanwhile, the Expedition 19 crew members worked with an array
of science experiments aboard the station Wednesday.
Commander Gennady Padalka worked with a Russian experiment used
for predicting natural and manmade disasters. He also spent time on
an experiment that researches the growth and development of plants
under spaceflight conditions in a special greenhouse facility.
Flight Engineer Mike Barratt worked with an experiment that
studies the effects of long-duration space flight on crew member's
heart functions and the blood vessels that supply their brain.
Flight Engineer Koichi Wakata completed another session with the
Sleep-Wake Actigraphy & Light Exposure during Spaceflight
(SLEEP) experiment that monitors the crew member's sleep and wake
patterns.
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