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.

FMI: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/