ROSCOSMOS - Soyuz TMA-08M Mission patch.
March 28, 2013
NASA's Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin are now in orbit after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Image aboove: The Soyuz TMA-08 spacecraft launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Photo credit: NASA TV.
Cassidy, Vinogradov and Misurkin will dock their Soyuz capsule with the International Space Station at 10:31 p.m. EDT tonight, the first time a crew has docked to the station the same day they left Earth.
Soyuz Launches to Space Station
Soyuz Commander Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy are the first station crew members to take this expedited route to the orbiting laboratory. They are scheduled to rendezvous and dock with the station after only four orbits instead of the standard two-day flight required to reach the complex. While this is the first crewed spacecraft to employ this technique, Russian space officials have successfully tested it with the last three Progress cargo flights.
Cassidy, Vinogradov and Misurkin will dock with the station’s Poisk module at 10:32 p.m. After the hatches open at 12:10 a.m. Friday, the new trio will join Commander Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency and Flight Engineers Tom Marshburn of NASA and Roman Romanenko of Roscosmos who have been residing at the orbital laboratory since Dec. 21, 2012. All six crew members crew will then participate in a welcome ceremony with family members and mission officials gathered at the Russian Mission Control Center in Star City near Moscow.
Interior view of Soyuz TMA-08M in flight
NASA TV coverage of the docking begins at 9:30 p.m. and returns at 11:30 for the hatch opening and welcome ceremony.
Expedition 35 will operate with its full six-person crew complement until May when Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko return to Earth aboard their Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft. Their departure will mark the beginning of Expedition 36 under the command of Vinogradov, who along with crewmates Cassidy and Misurkin will maintain the station as a three-person crew until the launch of three additional flight engineers in late May. Cassidy, Vinogradov and Misurkin are scheduled to return to Earth in September.
During the approximate six-month timeframe of Expeditions 35 and 36, 137 investigations will be performed on the U.S. operating segment of the station, and 44 on the Russian segment. More than 430 investigators from around the world are involved in the research. The investigations cover human research, biological and physical sciences, technology development, Earth observation, and education.
Image above: Expedition 35 Chris Cassidy of NASA, along with Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos). Photo credit: NASA/Victor Zelentsov.
Cassidy, a commander in the U.S. Navy, is making his second spaceflight. His first visit to the station was as an STS-127 mission specialist aboard space shuttle Endeavour in July 2009. During that mission Cassidy performed three spacewalks, spending more than 18 hours outside the orbiting complex.
This is the third space mission for Vinogradov, a former design engineer. Previously, Vinogradov was a crew member aboard space station Mir for 197 days in 1997-98 and spent 182 days aboard the International Space Station in 2006 as an Expedition 13 flight engineer.
A retired lieutenant colonel in the Russian Air Force, Misurkin will be making his first spaceflight. He was selected as a cosmonaut candidate in 2006 and qualified as a test-cosmonaut in 2009.
Read more about Expedition 35: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition35/index.html
For more information about the International Space Station (ISS), visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
Images, Video, Text, Credits: ROSCOSMOS / ROSCOSMOS TV / NASA TV / Orbiter.ch Aerospace.
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