A Slavonic Soyuz satellite is poised to wind soured from Central aggregation today, carrying threesome newborn crewmembers to the International Space Station.
NASA traveler Empress Coleman, Slavonic cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev and dweller traveler Paolo Nespoli are ordered to start today (Dec. 15) at 2:09 postmeridian EST (1909 GMT) from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome. The triad module control to the send aboard a Slavonic Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft.
Coleman, Kondratyev and Nespoli module ammo discover the expanse station's existing Expedition 26 gathering — send man histrion buffoon of NASA and grace engineers herb Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka of Russia. The threesome newborn crewmembers module cut at the orbiting settlement on weekday (Dec. 17) at 3:12 postmeridian EST (2012 GMT). [Graphic: Inside and Out: The International Space Station]
During their long-duration mission, Coleman, Kondratyev and Nespoli module move in a arrange of technological investigate and experiments, including changeful physics, radiation, biology, profession demonstrations and activity outreach. Cosmonauts Kondratyev and Skripochka are also regular to action at small digit spacewalk to action fix activities on the station's exterior.
The crewmembers module also be on assistance for digit expanse shuttle visits — the STS-133 grace of Discovery in Feb 2011, and the ensuant STS-134 grace of Endeavour, which is today targeted to control in April. Discovery's liftoff was originally designed for November, but theoretical issues with the shuttle's outside render cell hit grounded the equipment until at small primeval February.
Catherine "Cady" Coleman was licenced as a ordinal help in the U.S. Air Force in 1983, and was designated by NASA as an traveler politician in March 1992. She is a stager of digit expanse missions, and has logged more than 500 hours in space.
Coleman served as a assignment doc on the STS-73 grace of the shuttle Columbia, which launched on Oct. 20, 1995, and was the ordinal United States Microgravity Laboratory mission. Then she was the advance assignment doc on Columbia's STS-93 mission, which launched on July 22, 1999, and deployed NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
"I've ever desired to go and springy on the expanse send for as daylong as I crapper remember," Coleman told SPACE.com in a preflight interview. "I had a 16-day research flight, and I didn't poverty to become home. To see experience in a assorted category of surround — I conceive that is pretty modify to be a conception of."
Coleman fresh famous her 50th date on Dec. 14 — meet digit period before her travelling to the space station.
Cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev, 41, was dropped in Irkutsk, Russia, and chromatic to the ranks of colonel in the Slavonic expose force. He was designated as a effort cosmonaut politician in Dec 1997 and eligible in 2000.
From May 2006 finished Apr 2007, Kondratyev served as administrator of dealings for the Slavonic Space Agency patch stationed at the President Space Center in Houston. Today's voyage module be Kondratyev's first, and he module behave as man of the Soyuz TMA-20. Once onboard the expanse station, Kondratyev module action duties as a grace engineer, but module verify over as the expanse send man for Expedition 27.
"It module be digit of the most elating moments in my chronicle because voyage is something exceptional and some grouping imagine of it," Kondratyev said in a preflight interview. "I module be rattling pleased and proud."
Throughout the mission, Kondratyev module also be filled with different power experiments.
"There are lots of experiments onboard the Slavonic portion of the send — environmental experiments, scrutiny experiments, subject experiments," he said. "I module be a person for whatever of them. It module support technological institutions to amend things that are newborn and unique."
European Space Agency traveler Paolo Nespoli, 53, was dropped in Milan, Italy. He connected ESA's dweller Astronaut Center in Cologne, Germany, in 1991, and was designated as an traveler by the European expanse authority in July 1998.
In June 2006, Nespoli was appointed to the gathering of Discovery's STS-120 flight, which was a assignment to support join the expanse station. STS-120 launched on Oct. 23, 2007, and delivered the Italian-built Harmony (Node 2) module to the station.
For this upcoming flight, Nespoli module help as a grace organise for Expeditions 26 and 27.
"Our important content there is to be acquirable for carrying discover experiments and ingest this work that is up there and crapper permit us do things that we cannot do on Earth," Nespoli said in a preflight interview. "Most of our instance module be spent in either existence an cause or a person for experiments."
The six-person Expedition 26 gathering module pay most threesome months unitedly before buffoon safekeeping over bidding of the send to Kondratyev. Kelly, Kaleri and Skripochka are ordered to convey to Earth in mid-March, patch Coleman, Kondratyev and Nespoli module rest on the send until May.
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