Fincke, Lonchakov, Simonyi land in Kazakhstan

William Atkins
Wednesday, 08 April 2009 18:02

Science - Space

NASA continues to say, “Many of the experiments are designed to gather information about the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the human body, which will help with planning future missions to the moon and beyond. Other experiments involved practical solutions to extended mission challenges such as repairing electrical components and fighting fire in microgravity.”

The Expedition 19 crew is replacing them up inside the Space Station. Included in the crew are Expedition 19 commander and Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and Expedition 19 flight engineer and U.S. astronaut Mike Barratt.

Both men launched to the station on a Soyuz capsule on March 26, 2009 aboard Soyuz TMA-14.

Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata was launched to the Space Station on space shuttle Discovery during mission STS-119 on March 15, 2009.

The Expedition 19 crew will be joined in space for the first six-person crew of the International Space Station in May 2009.

All of the expansions for the ISS these past many months, including the extra solar arrays, additional toilet, crew quarters, and more, were all in preparation for the expansion of the crew from three to six.

The Expedition 20 crew will consist of these three Expedition 19 crewmembers and Russian (RSA) cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Frank De Winne, and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Robert Thirsk.

They will fly to the Space Station aboard the Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft.

Padalka will be the first commander of a six-crew ISS and the first commander of two consecutive expeditions (Expedition 19 and 20).

At this time, all five partners participating in the ISS project will be represented on the Station. These partners are the United State (NASA), Japan (JAXA), Russia (RSA), Canada (CSA), and the European Union (ESA).

Truly, this will be an “international” crew onboard the Space Station.