This Week at NASA Recap

With the shortened work week This Week at NASA is a recap of events from the previous week through July 2nd. Onboard the International Space Station, Expedition 31 Commander Oleg Kononenko handed over the reins of the orbiting outpost to cosmonaut Gennady Padalka. The start of Padalka’s tenure as the lead of Expedition 32 makes him the first three-time commander of the station.

He’s joined on the crew by NASA Flight Engineer Joe Acaba and Russian Flight Engineer Sergei Revin. Kononenko and Flight Engineers Don Pettit of NASA and Andre Kuipers of the European Space Agency returned to Earth in a Soyuz spacecraft which made a successful parachute-assisted landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan to cap off a six month stay onboard the ISS. Also, a visit to Wallops Flight Facility by Senator Barbara Mikulski to check out Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Antares rocket and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport’s new launch pad, The first steps in preparing for NASA’s Exploration Flight Test-1, or EFT-1 in 2014 are underway as the Orion spacecraft is worked on at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden delivers this year’s John H. Glenn Lecture in Space History.