Fri, Feb 28, 2003
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe told a
Congressional hearing Thursday on Capitol Hill that the three
Expedition Six crewmembers, who were originally scheduled to return
home in March aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis during the STS-114
mission, will now return to Earth aboard the Soyuz TMA-1 craft in
early May. The Soyuz TMA-1 was delivered to the space station in
late 2002 by the Soyuz 5 Taxi Crew and will be replaced by the
Soyuz TMA-2 craft, which is scheduled to launch in late April or
early May with an American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut on
board. Until the space shuttle is able to return to flight pending
the outcome of the Columbia accident investigation, the Soyuz
vehicle will be used by the ISS partnership for crew rotation.
Though no crew has been formally named for the upcoming Soyuz
crew rotation flight, two U.S. astronauts and two Russian
cosmonauts are in training at the Yuri A. Gagarin Cosmonaut
Training Center in Star City, Russia. They are NASA Astronauts Ed
Lu and Michael Foale and Russian Cosmonauts Yuri Malenchenko (Col.,
Russian Air Force) and Alexander Kaleri.
The Soyuz TMA-1 is currently docked to the station's Pirs
docking compartment. The next Soyuz TMA will dock to the
Earth-facing docking port of the Zarya module.
Aboard the station Thursday, Expedition Six Commander Ken
Bowersox, Flight Engineer Nikolai Budarin and NASA ISS Science
Officer Don Pettit spent time during their 96th day in space
performing maintenance, including troubleshooting efforts with the
Microgravity Science Glovebox and the Foot/Ground Reaction Forces
During Spaceflight, or FOOT, experiment.
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