ROSCOSMOS - Soyuz TMA-10M Mission patch.
March 10, 2014
The Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft carrying Soyuz Commander Oleg Kotov and Expedition 38 Flight Engineers Mike Hopkins and Sergey Ryazanskiy undocked from the Poisk module at 8:02 p.m. EDT. The trio will land about 3-1/2 hours later in Kazakhstan ending their mission after five-and-a-half months aboard the International Space Station.
Staying behind are new Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata and Flight Engineers Rick Mastracchio and Mikhail Tyurin. The crew members arrived at the station’s Rassvet module Nov. 7 aboard a Soyuz TMA-11M spacecraft. They are scheduled to return home in mid-May. Wakata, a Japanese astronaut, is the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s first station commander.
Image above: Expedition 38 crew members (from left) Mike Hopkins, Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy gather inside the Kibo laboratory for a crew portrait. Image Credit: NASA TV.
Kotov is completing his third mission aboard the orbital laboratory for a total of 526 days in space. He served as a flight engineer during Expedition 15 in 2007. He then served for six months as an Expedition 22/23 crew member beginning in December 2009.
Hopkins and Ryazanskiy are wrapping up their first space mission each accumulating 166 days in space. During his stay aboard the orbital laboratory, Hopkins conducted a pair of U.S. spacewalks for a total 12 hours and 58 minutes. Ryazanskiy conducted three Russian spacewalks during his mission working outside the station for 20 hours and five minutes.
Hopkins joined NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio for the first pair of Expedition 38 spacewalks installing a new ammonia pump module to restore the station’s cooling system. The U.S. astronauts began the first spacewalk Dec. 21 exiting the Quest airlock to remove and stow a degraded pump module. They completed the installation of the new pump module during a second spacewalk on Dec. 24.
Expedition 38 Hatch Closure
Video above: The hatches closed Monday at 4:58 p.m. EDT between the International Space Station and the docked Soyuz TMA-10M carrying Expedition 38 crew members Michael Hopkins, Soyuz Commander Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy. Video Credit: NASA TV.
Shortly after those excursions, Ryazanskiy and Kotov exited the Pirs docking compartment Dec. 27 to install photographic gear, route cables, remove completed external experiments and install new scientific gear. The duo went out a second time Jan. 27 to complete the photographic installation work, retrieve more science gear and enable robotic arm operations on the station’s Russian segment.
Kotov and Ryazanskiy’s first spacewalk occurred Nov. 9 when the duo handed off the Olympic torch in its first ever outer space portion of the relay. The torch was returned to Earth the next day and used to light the Olympic flame Feb. 7 at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia.
Expedition 38 ships off
Video above: Expedition 38 Commander Oleg Kotov, Michael Hopkins of NASA and Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryazanskiy wrapped up a 166 day stay on the International Space Station when their Soyuz spacecraft undocked from the orbiting laboratory to begin their journey back to Earth. The undocking was covered by NASA Television.
Kotov has completed six spacewalks over his cosmonaut career accumulating 36 hours and 51 minutes outside the space station in a Russian Orlan spacesuit.
Waiting to replace the returning trio are Expedition 39/40 crew members Steve Swanson, Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev. They are in Star City, Russia, completing mission training and making final preparations for their March 25 launch aboard a Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.
The crew will execute a 4-minute, 50-second deorbit burn at 10:30 p.m. ahead of a landing at 11:24 p.m. southeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. Live NASA Television coverage begins at 10:15 p.m.: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
For more information about International Space Station (ISS), visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
Image (mentioned), Videos (mentioned), Text, Credit: NASA.
Best regards, Orbiter.ch
