Docking With ISS Planned For Tuesday

NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin launched to the International Space Station at 2314 EST Sunday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The launch had been delayed following the loss of a Russian Progress cargo vessel in August.

NASA File Photo

Burbank, Shkaplerov and Ivanishin are scheduled to dock their Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft with their new home at 2333 EST Tuesday, November 15, and join Expedition 29 Commander Mike Fossum of NASA and Flight Engineers Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov. Fossum will hand over command of the station to the new crew within four days.

Fossum, Furukawa and Volkov launched in June and are scheduled to return to Earth in their Soyuz TMA-02M spacecraft at 2024 EST November 21 Expedition 30 begins when the current crew undocks, leaving Burbank in command. A formal change of command ceremony is planned for November 20.

NASA astronaut Don Pettit, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers are scheduled to launch to the station December 21, when they will join Expedition 30 as flight engineers. The six crew members will be busy with dozens of experiments during their time aboard the station. They also will welcome a new era of commercial resupply services from the United States. Expedition 30 is expected to greet the arrival of Dragon, a commercial resupply ship being built by SpaceX of Hawthorne, CA. Dragon will perform a test flight and rendezvous with the station, soon followed by Cygnus (scheduled for flight during Expedition 31), another commercial resupply ship being built by Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, VA.

FMI: www.nasa.gov/station