Skip to main content

Expedition 21 Crew Arrives at the International Space Station

The Expedition 21 and 22 crew members



Image above: The Expedition 20 and 21 crew members gathered in the Zvezda service module for a conference with family members and representatives on the ground. Credit: NASA TV

Flight Engineers Jeff Williams and Maxim Suraev along with spaceflight participant Guy Laliberté have arrived at the International Space Station. They docked their Soyuz TMA-16 to the aft end of the Zvezda service module at 4:35 a.m. EDT Friday. They launched Wednesday at 3:14 a.m. from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.

› View docking video

The newest station crew members entered the station after opening the hatches between the two spacecraft at 6:57 a.m.

Williams and Suraev are relieving Expedition 20 Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Michael Barratt who will depart in several days with their Canadian visitor, Laliberté. The three crew members will enter the Soyuz TMA-14 and undock from the Pirs docking compartment at 9:05 p.m. EDT on Oct. 10. They will land in Kazakhstan about three and a half hours later.

Their departure signifies the end of Expedition 20 and the start of Expedition 21. European astronaut Frank De Winne will have completed his duties as Expedition 20 Flight Engineer and assumed command of the International Space Station. De Winne, of the European Space Agency, arrived at the station May 29, 2009. He is scheduled to return to Earth on Dec. 1, 2009 in the same vehicle in which he arrived, the Soyuz TMA-15, which is attached to Zarya’s Earth-facing port. De Winne’s departure in December will leave Jeff Williams in charge of the station as Expedition 22 commander.

Also continuing their stays aboard the station and transitioning to Expedition 21 are Flight Engineers Nicole Stott, Roman Romanenko and Robert Thirsk. Thirsk and Romanenko will continue their long-duration stay until they depart with De Winne. Stott who arrived Aug. 30 aboard space shuttle Discovery will return home in November aboard space shuttle Atlantis.

Atlantis is scheduled to be the last space shuttle to transport a station crew member when it leaves the International Space Station with Nicole Stott on the STS-129 mission. The Russian Soyuz spacecraft will continue crew transportation to and from the orbiting laboratory.

Williams, Padalka and De Winne are all space station veterans. For Williams, Expedition 21 is his third stay aboard the station. His first visit was during shuttle mission STS-101 in May 2000 and then he served as a flight engineer during Expedition 13 in 2006. Expedition 21 is De Winne’s second station mission. He visited the station as part of a Soyuz taxi mission in late 2002. In addition to commanding Expeditions 19 and 20, Padalka was the Expedition 9 commander in 2004.

About new nasa photos, new nasa picture, nasa news, space nasa news, nasa space shuttle news, news in nasa, current nasa news, nasa daily news, nasa new space shuttle, nasa news today

› Read more about Expedition 21
› Read more about Expedition 20
› View crew timelines



NASA Publishes Report about International Space Station Science

Advances in the fight against food poisoning, new methods for delivering medicine to cancer cells, and better materials for future spacecraft are among the results published in a NASA report detailing scientific research accomplishments made aboard the International Space Station during its first eight years.

The report includes more than 100 science experiments ranging from bone studies to materials research.

› Read more
› Read full report (3.8 Mb PDF)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Kerala boat tragedy: Thirty five bodies have been fished out of the water

THEKKADY / KOCHI: A thick veil of grief descended on the famed tourist spot of Thekkady on Wednesday when Kerala witnessed its worst ever boat tragedy in the Mullaperiyar waters as the KTDC’s Jalakanyaka, carrying about 76 passengers, sank. Thirty five bodies have been fished out of the water. Any hope of finding more tourists alive faded with the daylight even as rescue personnel continued their desperate search. The two-deck boat, commissioned just a month back, was returning to the boat landing after an hour-long sight-seeing trip when tragedy struck. All the passengers on the upper deck apparently rushed to one side of the boat to take photos of a lone bison spotted on the shore. At the same time many from the lower deck flocked to the top leaving the lower almost empty. This movement and the uneven distribution of weight caused the boat to overbalance and turn turtle. Those remaining on the lower deck were trapped inside while about 20 on the upper deck were rescued by other boa

Special Status For Jammu & Kashmir Scraped: 5 Points About Article 370

Jammu & Kashmir will also be "reorganized," Home Minister Amit Shah said as talks about the state being trifurcated into three separate fields- Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh NEW DELHI: Article 370, which gives Jammu & Kashmir unique status, will be withdrawn this morning in parliament, Home Minister Amit Shah said . The announcement came after his cabinet meeting at his house this morning was held by Prime Minister Narendra Modi . Article 370 is a ' temporary provision ' granting special autonomous status to Jammu & Kashmir . It allows the state to draft its own Constitution and restricts the legislative powers of the parliament over the state. The government therefore requires state government approval for all legislation, except those related to defence, foreign affairs, finance, and communications. Parliament can not also improve or decrease the boundaries of the State under Article 370 As a consequence, citizens of Jammu & Kashmir

Enai Nokki Paayum Thotta Movie Review: Tiring and Unsatisfying

Movie Rating: 3/5 First of all things! The director's weakest film is the long delayed Enai Noki Paayum Thotta by Gautham Menon . The film's main weakness is the director's fascination with narrative style voice-over. It was good before Gautham used voice-over as a medium to tell his stories, but every scene in Enai Nokki Paayum Thotta begins and ends with Dhanush's voice-over, which irritates us after a point. The film is filled with tired stereotypes, and at a runtime of 157 minutes it is an unsatisfying watch. Like any other movie from Gautham Menon, here too hero Raghu (Dhanush) is a student of engineering, but this time his wife is not a student, but a film heroine Lekha ( Mega Akash ).She tells him she is not interested in movies and her boss Kuberan (Senthil Veeraswamy) coerced her into the profession for money (it looks like the girl is an orphan and Kuberan supported her studies and is her guardian). Raghu takes her to his Pollachi house and introduc