NASA Announces Space Station News Conference
HOUSTON – The crews of Expeditions 15 and 16, along with Malaysian Spaceflight Participant Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, will discuss their missions during a news conference aboard the International Space Station at 7 a.m. CDT, Monday, Oct. 15.
The 30-minute conference will be broadcast live on NASA Television. Questions from media will be taken from participating sites at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston; Kennedy Space Center, Fla.; NASA Headquarters in Washington; and Russian Mission Control Center, Korolev, Russia. Journalists should contact their preferred site to confirm its participation.
This week, the Expedition 15 crew is handing over operation of the orbiting laboratory to the Expedition 16 crew, led by Commander Peggy Whitson, the first woman to lead a long-duration spaceflight. Expedition 15 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov will complete their six-month stay aboard the station and return to Earth with Shukor in a Soyuz spacecraft on Sunday, Oct. 21.
Whitson, Expedition 16 Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko and Shukor launched Wednesday aboard a Soyuz TMA-11 craft and docked to the station Friday.
NASA astronaut and Flight Engineer Clayton Anderson, who has been on the station since June, will remain aboard and become part of the Expedition 16 crew.
During Expedition 16, Whitson and Malenchenko will be joined by Expedition 16 flight engineers Dan Tani, Leopold Eyharts of the European Space Agency and Garrett Reisman.
Tani will begin his work with the expedition during space shuttle Discovery’s STS-120 mission, targeted for launch Oct. 23. Space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-122 mission, which is targeted to liftoff on Dec. 6, will deliver Eyharts to the outpost and return Tani to Earth.
Reisman will head to the station on space shuttle Endeavour’s STS-123 mission, targeted for launch Feb. 14, 2008. He will replace Eyharts and return to Earth on a later shuttle flight.
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