NASA Mission Managers to Discuss Space Station Expedition

Dwayne Brown

Headquarters, Washington, DC

(Phone: 202/358-1726)

Eileen Hawley

Johnson Space Center, Houston TX

(Phone: 281/483-5111)

NOTE TO EDITORS: N00-049

With the launch of the first resident crew to the
International Space Station (ISS) scheduled for the end of the
month, NASA managers will discuss details of the Expedition 1
mission in a pre-launch news conference on Wednesday, Oct. 25, at
2 p.m. EDT at the Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX.

The news conference will be broadcast on NASA Television with
question-and-answer capability from NASA centers.

Jeff Hanley, Lead Flight Director for Expedition 1, will provide
comprehensive details of the vanguard mission to the new station
by Expedition Commander Bill Shepherd, Soyuz Commander Yuri
Gidzenko and Flight Engineer Sergei Krikalev. ISS Flight Director
John Curry will offer details of the crewmembers’ activities from
the time they are launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in
Kazakhstan through their docking to the international complex two
days later.

Shepherd, Gidzenko and Krikalev are tentatively scheduled to be
launched about 3:16 a.m. EST Oct. 30 on a Soyuz rocket. Docking is
planned for Nov. 1 about 4:10 a.m. EST.

Ninety minutes after docking, Shepherd will open the hatch to the
Zvezda module’s aft docking port and the crew will make history by
entering the ISS to begin the permanent human habitation of the
orbiting scientific center. A final pre-launch news conference by
the three crewmembers at Baikonur will be held on the eve of their
launch on Sunday, Oct. 29, and will replayed on NASA TV.

NASA TV can be found on GE-2, Transponder 9C at 85 degrees West
longitude, vertical polarization, with a frequency of 3880 MHz,
and audio of 6.8 MHz.

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