Latter Will Be First Six-Member ISS Crew

NASA announced this week the crewmembers of the upcoming STS-127 space shuttle mission and the Expedition 19 International Space Station mission. The STS-127 mission will deliver the final components of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo laboratory to the station, while Expedition 19 will double the size of the resident crew on the complex, expanding it to six people.

Mark L. Polansky will command the shuttle Endeavour for STS-127, targeted to launch in 2009. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Douglas G. Hurley will serve as the pilot. Mission specialists are Navy Lt. Cmdr. Christopher J. Cassidy, Thomas H. Marshburn, David A. Wolf and Julie Payette, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut.

The mission will deliver Army Col. Timothy L. Kopra to the station to join Expedition 18 as a flight engineer and science officer and return Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata to Earth. Hurley, Cassidy, Marshburn and Kopra will be making their first trips to space.

STS-127 will launch and install the Kibo Japanese Experiment Module Exposed Facility and Experiment Logistics Module Exposed Section. The facility will provide a type of "front porch" for experiments in the exposed environment, and a robotic arm that will be attached to the Kibo Pressurized Module and used to position experiments outside the station. The mission will include five spacewalks.

Polansky first flew as pilot of STS-98 in 2001 and then commanded STS-116 in 2006. He considers Edison, NJ his hometown. Polansky has bachelor's and master's degrees from Purdue University.

Expedition 19 will be commanded by cosmonaut and Russian Air Force Col. Gennady Padalka. In March 2009, he will command the Soyuz spacecraft that will launch him and astronaut Michael R. Barratt to the station. Astronaut Nicole P. Stott will join them, arriving on the STS-128 shuttle mission to replace Kopra. She will serve as a flight engineer and science officer and return to Earth on the next Soyuz spacecraft. Barratt and Stott will be making their first trips to space.

In May 2009, cosmonaut and Russian Air Force Lt. Col. Yuri Lonchakov will command a Soyuz spacecraft that will launch to join Expedition 19 in progress on the station. With Lonchakov will be European Space Agency astronaut Frank De Winne of Belgium and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert B. Thirsk. Their arrival will expand the station's crew size to six for the first time. Lonchakov and De Winne will serve as flight engineers on the station and return on the Soyuz with Stott. Thirsk also will serve as a flight engineer and will return to Earth on STS-129.

Expedition 19 will include visits by two space shuttle missions that will equip the station with the additional facilities needed to support a six-person crew. Expedition 19 also will prepare the station for the later arrival of Russian research modules and additional docking ports.

Padalka commanded Expedition 26 on Mir in 1998 and 1999, and Expedition 9 on the ISS in 2004. He was born in Krasnodar, Russia, and graduated from Eisk Military Aviation College.

FMI: www.nasa.gov/ntv, www.jsc.nasa.gov/bios