Six, Count 'em, SIX Astros Working On Board Now
It's getting kinda cozy up in orbit... at least as far as the
International Space station is concerned. The Expedition 28 crew of
the International Space Station enjoyed a day off Friday to catch
up on some much-needed rest following the arrival of three new
flight engineers Thursday evening aboard a Russian Soyuz
spacecraft.
Following a flawless launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in
Kazakhstan on Tuesday, NASA astronaut Mike Fossum, Russian
cosmonaut Sergei Volkov and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
astronaut Satoshi Furukawa docked their Soyuz TMA-02M spacecraft to
the station’s Rassvet module at 5:18 p.m. EDT Thursday.
The trio joined their Expedition 28 crewmates when the hatches
between the Soyuz and the station opened at 8:34 p.m. .Commander
Andrey Borisenko and Flight Engineers Ron Garan and Alexander
Samokutyaev, who arrived at the station April 6, welcomed the three
new flight engineers aboard their orbital home.
Volkov is a station veteran on his second long-term space
mission. His first was as Expedition 17 commander in 2008. Fossum
visited the space station twice aboard space shuttle Discovery and,
performed a total of six spacewalks during STS-121 in 2006 and
STS-124 in 2008. Furukawa is conducting his first spaceflight
mission.
The six-person Expedition 28 crew will continue the
uninterrupted presence of humans on the station since Nov. 2, 2000,
conducting expanded scientific research and station maintenance
activities.
The station’s residents also will welcome the crew of the
last space shuttle flight, Atlantis' STS-135 mission, targeted to
launch July 8. The shuttle will deliver critical supplies in the
Italian-built Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module and support
spacewalks by Fossum and Garan to retrieve a failed cooling system
pump module, which Atlantis will return to Earth for analysis
Expedition 28 officially began May 23 when the Expedition 27
crew undocked while space shuttle Endeavour and the STS-134 crew
were at the station. Expedition 27 crew members Dmitry Kondratyev,
Cady Coleman and Paolo Nespoli landed in Kazakhstan after 159 days
in space.
Nespoli took photographs and video of Endeavour docked to the
station from the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft. The imagery and video are
the first taken of a shuttle docked to the station from the
perspective of a Soyuz spacecraft.