Olympic Torch Highlights Station Spacewalk

ISS - Expedition 37 Mission patch.

Nov. 9, 2013

Two Russian cosmonauts clad in Orlan spacesuits conducted an out-of-this-world handoff of the Olympic torch at the start of Saturday’s planned 6-hour spacewalk to perform maintenance on the International Space Station.

Spacewalkers Hand Off Olympic Torch

Expedition 37 Flight Engineers Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy opened the hatch to the Pirs docking compartment at 9:34 a.m. EST and floated outside to begin a photo opportunity with the unlit torch.

Image above: The view from Flight Engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy's helmet camera as Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov waves the Olympic torch outside the International Space Station during Saturday's spacewalk. Image Credit: NASA TV.

An icon of international cooperation through sports competition, the Olympic torch arrived at the space station Thursday aboard a Soyuz spacecraft carrying three new crew members – Expedition 38 Flight Engineers Mikhail Tyurin, Rick Mastracchio and Koichi Wakata. On Sunday, the torch will return to Earth aboard another Soyuz spacecraft vehicle along with Expedition 37 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineers Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano.

The spacewalk is a high-flying extension of a relay that will culminate with the torch being used to light the Olympic flame at the Feb. 7 opening ceremonies of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia.

Image above: Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov waves the Olympic torch as Flight Engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy looks on during a spacewalk outside the International Space Station. Image Credit: NASA TV.

After Kotov and Ryazanskiy completed their photo and video session with the torch outside the station, they stowed it back inside the airlock and proceeded with the remainder of their chores 260 miles above the Earth.

The two spacewalkers translated out to the hull of the Zvezda service module to continue the set up of a combination extravehicular activity workstation and biaxial pointing platform that was installed during an Expedition 36 spacewalk on Aug. 22. Kotov and Ryazanskiy will begin by moving a foot restraint from the exterior of Zvezda and attaching it to the mounting seat of the workstation. While there, they will also install some handrails on the workstation.

Image above: This graphic shows the location of the EVA workstation and biaxial pointing platform on the exterior of the International Space Station's Zvezda service module. Image Credit: NASA TV.

Next they will loosen a trio of bolts and remove a launch bracket from the pointing platform. A high resolution camera system will be installed on the platform during a spacewalk targeted for December.

For their final planned task, Kotov and Ryazanskiy will deactivate an experiment package on Zvezda. After securing the experiment's cable and restraining its antenna in a folded-down position, the spacewalkers will head back to the airlock to wrap up the excursion.

Image above: This graphic shows the locations of the nine International Space Station crew members during Saturday's spacewalk. Image Credit: NASA TV.

During the spacewalk, Yurchikhin, Parmitano and Nyberg will be isolated to their Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft and Zvezda, while Flight Engineer Mike Hopkins is restricted to the Poisk module and his Soyuz TMA-10M craft. The remaining three crew members -- Mastracchio, Wakata and Tyurin – have access to much of the remaining area of the station, including the Zarya module, their Soyuz TMA-11M vehicle and the Rassvet module to which it is docked, as well as the entirety of the U.S. segment of the station.

Saturday’s spacewalk is the 174th in support of space station assembly and maintenance, the fourth in Kotov's career and the first for Ryazanskiy. Kotov, who is designated EV1 for the spacewalk is wearing the suit with red stripes. Ryazanskiy, EV2, is wearing the suit marked with blue stripes.

This is the eighth spacewalk conducted at the station this year. In December, Tyurin will accompany Kotov on his fifth spacewalk.

For more information about the International Space Station (ISS), visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/

Images (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: NASA / NASA TV.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

ExoMars lander module named Schiaparelli

ESA / ROSCOSMOS - ExoMars Mission logo.

8 November 2013

The entry, descent and landing demonstrator module that will fly on the 2016 ExoMars mission has been named ‘Schiaparelli’ in honour of the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, who famously mapped the Red Planet’s surface features in the 19th century.

ExoMars is a joint endeavour between ESA and Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, and comprises two missions that will be launched to Mars in 2016 and 2018.

ExoMars 2016 mission

The Trace Gas Orbiter and Schiaparelli make up the 2016 mission, while the ExoMars rover, with its carrier and surface platform, will be launched in 2018. Working together, the orbiter and rover will search the planet for signs of life, past and present.

Schiaparelli will prove key technologies for Europe with a controlled landing on Mars. It will enter the atmosphere at 21 000 km/h and use parachutes and thrusters to brake to less than 15 km/h before landing less than eight minutes later.

The module will collect data on the atmosphere during the entry and descent, and its instruments will perform local environment measurements at the landing site, which is in a region of plains known as Meridiani Planum.

The 2016 mission will arrive at Mars during the period when seasonal global dust storms are most likely. Thus the measurements obtained during landing will provide important information for improving models of the atmosphere and the mechanisms that trigger dust storms “Considering the importance of Giovanni Schiaparelli’s pioneering observations of Mars, it was an easy decision to give his name to the ExoMars module that is paving the way to the further exploration of the Red Planet,” says Alvaro Giménez, ESA’s Director of Science and Robotic Exploration.

ExoMars Entry, Descent and Landing Demonstrator Module Structural Model

The name was suggested by a group of Italian scientists to the president of the Italian space agency, who then proposed it to ESA. Italy is the largest European contributor to the ExoMars programme.

Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli (1835–1910) was an accomplished scientist who dedicated much of his career to cataloguing and naming the surface features of Mars. During the ‘Great Opposition’ of 1877, when Mars was relatively close to Earth, he surveyed the planet by eye through a telescope and sketched a network of linear features that he saw running across the surface. He assumed that these were natural water-filled channels and used the equivalent Italian word, ‘canali’.

Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli (1835–1910)

This term was often translated into English as ‘canals’, leading to considerable speculation about whether a network of artificial watercourses had been excavated by an intelligent civilisation on Mars, perhaps for irrigation purposes.

However, many of the linear features seen and drawn by Schiaparelli and others, most notably Percival Lowell, were argued to be optical illusions resulting from observations by eye. Later photographic images of Mars did not show them and the arrival of the first space probes at the planet in the 1960s confirmed it to be the cold, dry place we know today.

ExoMars EDM set for shaker test

Nevertheless, as a result of further space exploration, including ESA’s Mars Express, we also now know that, deep in the Red Planet’s past, water did flow freely in naturally-formed rivers and valleys, in some way vindicating Schiaparelli’s original hypothesis. He also set a precedent for documenting features on planets, and many of the names he proposed for the major landscapes of Mars are still in use today.

Schiaparelli is also well known for working out that regular annual meteor showers emanating from specific regions of the sky are due to Earth’s orbit intercepting trails of debris left by comets as they make their way through the Solar System. He also made accurate measurements of the rotation periods of Venus and Mercury and was a strong believer in the importance of science popularisation: he wrote books on astronomy and often gave public lectures.

“Schiaparelli’s dedication to planetary science and to the communication of science was recognised worldwide and, as such, we want to celebrate his achievements by naming a key part of the ExoMars mission after him,” says Rolf de Groot, Head of the Coordination Office for the Robotic Exploration Programme at ESA.

He adds: “The Schiaparelli module will not only provide Europe with the technology for landing on Mars, but will also give us a taste of the atmosphere and insight into the local environment at a new location on the planet’s surface – exploration that Giovanni Schiaparelli could only have dreamed of over 135 years ago when he first started sketching the Red Planet.”

Related links:

Robotic exploration of Mars: http://exploration.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=118

Looking at Mars: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Mars_Express

Images, Text, Credits: ESA / B. Bethge / A. Le Floc’h / AOES Medialab.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Time to come home, Luca

ESA - Luca Parmitano Volare Mission patch.

8 November 2013

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano has run over 30 experiments on the International Space Station, helped to dock three spaceships, kept his cool during two spacewalks and entertained us with his blogs and pictures of Earth from above – and now it is time for him to come home.

Luca

After almost six months on the orbital complex, Luca will return home in a Soyuz spacecraft together with NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg and cosmonaut commander Fyodor Yurchikhin during the night of Sunday–Monday.

Looking back on Volare

The return trip through our atmosphere after leaving the Station will be short but bumpy, ending on the steppe of Kazakhstan.

Undocking from the Station on Sunday evening, the crew will reduce their cruising speed of 28 800 km/h in orbit to zero over the course of three hours.

Luca’s Soyuz

Along the way, their Soyuz will separate into three parts, leaving the orbital and propulsion modules to burn up as they fall to Earth. The descent module with Luca, Karen and Fyodor will encounter temperatures of up to 1600°C as friction from the atmosphere heats the protective shield.

At 9 km above sea level a parachute is deployed automatically, slowing the astronauts down from 864 km/h to 324 km/h. The base heatshield is then jettisoned to expose the four solid-propellant motors that fire moments before impact to softed the landing.

Previous Soyuz landing

The astronauts have sprung seats to lessen the impact even more but even so the experience was likened to “surviving a small car crash” by ESA astronaut André Kuipers when he took the same trip back last year.

The last part of Luca’s journey home will be by helicopter and aircraft to Houston, USA with Karen. The Volare mission might be over but the astronaut’s work is not finished. All astronauts return from space weakened and exhausted as their bodies readjust to Earthly gravity.

For the scientists involved in the Volare experiments, their analysis has only just begun. Many experiments require data from the astronauts as soon as they land. Luca can expect questionnaires, muscle biopsies and more medical tests – all in the name of science and human exploration.

Home (cloud-covered Italy)

Follow the undocking and return to Earth with updates from ESA mission control at the Columbus Control Centre on Luca’s blog and via Twitter.

Luca’s Volare mission is provided through an agreement with Italy’s ASI space agency.

Related links:

Missione Volare: http://www.esa.int/ESA_in_your_country/Italy/Volare

Volare blog: http://blogs.esa.int/luca-parmitano/

Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI): http://www.asi.it/

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ESA / NASA.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA's GRAIL Mission Puts a New Face on the Moon

NASA - GRAIL Mission patch.

Nov. 7, 2013

Scientists using data from the lunar-orbiting twins of NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission are gaining new insight into how the face of the moon received its rugged good looks. A report on the asymmetric distribution of lunar impact basins is published in this week's edition of the journal Science.

"Since time immemorial, humanity has looked up and wondered what made the man in the moon," said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. "We know the dark splotches are large, lava-filled, impact basins that were created by asteroid impacts about four billion years ago. GRAIL data indicate that both the near side and the far side of the moon were bombarded by similarly large impactors, but they reacted to them much differently.”

Image above: Using a precision formation-flying technique, the twin GRAIL spacecraft mapped the moon's gravity field, as depicted in this artist's rendering. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Understanding lunar impact basins has been hampered by the simple fact that there is a lack of consensus on their size. Most of the largest impact basins on the near side of the moon (the moon's face) have been filled with lava flows, which hide important clues about the shape of the land that could be used for determining their dimensions. The GRAIL mission measured the internal structure of the moon in unprecedented detail for nine months in 2012. With the data, GRAIL scientists have redefined the sizes of massive impact basins on the moon.

Maps of crustal thickness generated by GRAIL revealed more large impact basins on the near-side hemisphere of the moon than on the far side. How could this be if both hemispheres were, as widely believed, on the receiving end of the same number of impacts?

Scientists have long known that the temperatures of the near-side hemisphere of the moon were higher than those on the far side: the abundances of the heat producing elements uranium and thorium are higher on the near side than the far side, and as a consequence, the vast majority of volcanic eruptions occurred on the moon's near-side hemisphere.

Image above: This graphic depicting the crustal thickness of the moon was generated using gravity data from NASA's GRAIL mission and topography data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ IPGP.

“Impact simulations indicate that impacts into a hot, thin crust representative of the early moon’s near-side hemisphere would have produced basins with as much as twice the diameter as similar impacts into cooler crust, which is indicative of early conditions on the moon’s far-side hemisphere,” notes lead author Katarina Miljkovic of the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris.

The new GRAIL research is also helping redefine the concept of the late heavy bombardment, a proposed spike in the rate of crater creation by impacts about 4 billion years ago. The late heavy bombardment is based largely on the ages of large near-side impact basins that are either within, or adjacent to the dark, lava-filled basins, or lunar maria, named Oceanus Procellarum and Mare Imbrium. However, the special composition of the material on and below the surface of the near side implies that the temperatures beneath this region were not representative of the moon as a whole at the time of the late heavy bombardment. The difference in the temperature profiles would have caused scientists to overestimate the magnitude of the basin-forming impact bombardment. Work by GRAIL scientists supports the hypothesis that the size distribution of impact basins on the far-side hemisphere of the moon is a more accurate indicator of the impact history of the inner solar system than those on the near side.

Launched as GRAIL A and GRAIL B in September 2011, the probes, renamed Ebb and Flow by schoolchildren in Montana, operated in a nearly circular orbit near the poles of the moon at an altitude of about 34 miles (55 kilometers) until their mission ended in December 2012. The distance between the twin probes changed slightly as they flew over areas of greater and lesser gravity caused by visible features, such as mountains and craters, and by masses hidden beneath the lunar surface.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. managed GRAIL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission was part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Md., manages the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Operations of the spacecraft's laser altimeter, which provided supporting data used in this investigation, is led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built GRAIL.

For more information about GRAIL, visit http://www.nasa.gov/grail and http://grail.nasa.gov

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA / Dwayne Brown / JPL / DC Agle / Massachusetts Institute of Technology / Sarah McDonnell.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

Asteroid or comet?

ESA - Hubble Space Telescope logo.

7 November 2013

Hubble astronomers observe bizarre six-tailed asteroid

Hubble views extraordinary multi-tailed asteroid P/2013 P5

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have observed a unique and baffling object in the asteroid belt that looks like a rotating lawn sprinkler or badminton shuttlecock. While this object is on an asteroid-like orbit, it looks like a comet, and is sending out tails of dust into space.

Normal asteroids appear as tiny points of light. But this asteroid, designated P/2013 P5, has six comet-like tails of dust radiating from it like the spokes on a wheel. It was first spotted in August of this year as an unusually fuzzy-looking object by astronomers using the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii [1].

Because nothing like this has ever been seen before, astronomers are scratching their heads to find an adequate explanation for its mysterious appearance.

Labelled view of extraordinary multi-tailed asteroid P/2013 P5

The multiple tails were discovered in Hubble images taken on 10 September 2013. When Hubble returned to the asteroid on 23 September, its appearance had totally changed. It looked as if the entire structure had swung around.

"We were literally dumbfounded when we saw it," said lead investigator David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles, USA. "Even more amazingly, its tail structures change dramatically in just 13 days as it belches out dust. That also caught us by surprise. It's hard to believe we're looking at an asteroid."

One explanation for the odd appearance is that the asteroid's rotation rate increased to the point where its surface started flying apart, ejecting dust in episodic eruptions that started last spring. The team rules out an asteroid impact because a lot of dust would have been blasted into space all at once, whereas P5 has ejected dust intermittently over a period of at least five months [2].

Careful modelling by team member Jessica Agarwal of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Lindau, Germany, showed that the tails could have been formed by a series of impulsive dust-ejection events [3]. Radiation pressure from the Sun smears out the dust into streamers. "Given our observations and modelling, we infer that P/2013 P5 might be losing dust as it rotates at high speed," says Agarwal. "The Sun then drags this dust into the distinct tails we're seeing."

Schematic of active asteroid P/2013 P5

The asteroid could possibly have been spun up to a high speed as pressure from the Sun's light exerted a torque on the body. If the asteroid's spin rate became fast enough, Jewitt said, the asteroid's weak gravity would no longer be able to hold it together. Dust might avalanche down towards the equator, and maybe shatter and fall off, eventually drifting into space to make a tail. So far, only a small fraction of the main mass, perhaps 100 to 1000 tonnes of dust, has been lost. The asteroid is thousands of times more massive, with a radius of up to 240 metres.

Follow-up observations may show whether the dust leaves the asteroid in the equatorial plane, which would be quite strong evidence for a rotational breakup. Astronomers will also try to measure the asteroid's true spin rate.

Jewitt's interpretation implies that rotational breakup may be a common phenomenon in the asteroid belt; it may even be the main way in which small asteroids "die" [4]. "In astronomy, where you find one, you eventually find a whole bunch more," Jewitt said. "This is just an amazing object to us, and almost certainly the first of many more to come."

The paper from Jewitt's team appears online in the 7 November issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Notes:

[1] The comet was discovered by Micheli et al. on 27 August 2013. It was spotted in observations from 18 August 2013. The discovery was announced in a Minor Planet Electronic Circular.

[2] Agarwal calculated that the first ejection event occurred on 15 April, and the last one on 4 September 2013. Other eruptions occurred on 18 July, 24 July, 8 August, and 26 August 2013.

[3] A less likely option is that this emission is a result of water ice sublimating. Water ice can survive within the asteroid belt, although only at the outskirts or if buried deep enough within a large enough asteroid to be shielded. However, P5 is likely made of metamorphic rocks, making it incapable of holding ice in the same way that comets do. This, coupled with P5's orbit and its very small size, makes it very unlikely that its mass loss would be due to ice sublimation.

[4] This is not the first time that Hubble has observed a strange asteroid. In 2010, Hubble spotted a strange X-shaped asteroid (heic1016). However, unlike P/2013 P5, this was thought to have been formed by a collision. Later that year astronomers observed asteroid (596) Scheila, an object with a tail that was surrounded by a C-shaped cloud of dust (opo1113a). Again, this asteroid was thought to be the result of a collision between Scheila and a much smaller body — only the second time that such an event has been spotted.

Notes for editors:

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

The international team of astronomers in the Hubble study consists of D. Jewitt (UCLA, USA), J. Agarwal (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany), H. Weaver (The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, USA), M. Mutchler (STScI, USA), and S. Larson (University of Arizona, USA). The paper, entitled “The Extraordinary Multi-Tailed Main-Belt Comet P/2013 P5”, is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Links:

Science paper: http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/releases/science_papers/heic1320a.pdf

NASA press release: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2013/52

Images of Hubble: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/archive/category/spacecraft/

Images, Text, Credits: NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (University of California, Los Angeles), J. Agarwal (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research), H. Weaver (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory), M. Mutchler, A. Feild (STScI) and S. Larson (University of Arizona).

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

New Crew Arrives at Space Station, Station Home to Nine Residents

ROSCOSMOS - Soyuz TMA-11M Mission patch.

Nov. 7, 2013

A new trio of Expedition 38 flight engineers docked to the Rassvet docking compartment at 5:27 a.m. Thursday. They lifted off about six hours earlier from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, at 11:14 p.m. EST Tuesday aboard a Soyuz TMA-11M spacecraft.

Image above: The Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft with Earth in the background is just moments away from docking to the Rassvet module. Image Credit: NASA TV.

They will open the Soyuz and station hatches in a couple of hours to be greeted by six station crew members. New station crew members Mikhail Tyurin, Koichi Wakata and Rick Mastracchio will join Expedition 37 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineers Karen Nyberg, Luca Parmitano, Oleg Kotov, Mike Hopkins and Sergey Ryazanskiy.

This will be the first time since October 2009 that nine people have resided on the station without the presence of a space shuttle. However, just four days later the station residents will say goodbye to Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano, all Expedition 37 crew members, when they undock in the Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft and land in Kazakhstan about 3-1/2 hours later.

Soyuz hooks up to the station

When the Expedition 37 trio returns home this Sunday they will have completed a 5-1/2 month stay in space. The station's newest Expedition 38 trio will live and work in space until May 2014.

New Crew Arrives at Space Station

Expedition 38 officially begins when the home-bound trio undocks. Kotov will become station commander for the second time since Expedition 23 in 2010. Staying behind are veteran station residents Mikhail Tyurin and Koichi Wakata; Rick Mastracchio, a veteran of three shuttle missions; and Mike Hopkins and Sergey Ryazanskiy, who are both on their first missions.

International Space Station (ISS). Image Credit:  NASA

All nine crew members will participate in a joint crew news conference Friday Nov. 8 at 8:50 a.m. during their very busy four days together. The crew will talk about the upcoming 15th anniversary of the space station's construction (the station has been continuously occupied for 13 years).

Read about the joint crew news conference: http://www.nasa.gov/press/2013/november/three-space-station-crews-answer-media-questions-from-orbit/

For more information about the International Space Station (ISS), visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition36/gallery.html

Images (mentioned), Videos, Text, Credits: NASA / NASA TV.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Expedition 38 Launches to Join Six-Member Station Crew

ROSCOSMOS - Soyuz TMA-11M Mission patch.

Nov. 7, 2013

Image above: The Soyuz TMA-11M spacecraft heads to space seconds after launching on time from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. Image Credit: NASA TV.

A new trio of Expedition 38 flight engineers lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, at 11:14 p.m. EST Wednesday aboard a Soyuz TMA-11M spacecraft. They are on a trip to the International Space Station that will take just over six hours.

Expedition 38 Launches to Join Six-Member Station Crew

View the Programming Guide for Expedition 38 activities: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/news/index.html

Image above: Expedition 38 crew members Koichi Wakata, Mikhail Tyurin and Rick Mastracchio pose for a crew portrait attired in Russian Sokol launch and entry suits. Image Credit: Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.

After four orbits they will dock to the Rassvet docking compartment at 5:31 a.m. Wednesday. The Soyuz and station hatches will open about two hours later when they will be greeted by six station crew members. New station crew members Mikhail Tyurin, Koichi Wakata and Rick Mastracchio will join Expedition 37 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineers Karen Nyberg, Luca Parmitano, Oleg Kotov, Mike Hopkins and Sergey Ryazanskiy.

 There will be nine crew members on board ISS. Image Credit: NASA TV

Read more about the nine-member crew activities: http://www.nasa.gov/press/2013/october/three-space-station-crews-get-ready-for-relocation-launch-landing

Expedition 38 Lifts Off. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

This will be the first time since October 2009 that nine people have resided on the station without the presence of a space shuttle. However, just four days later the station residents will say goodbye to Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano, all Expedition 37 crew members, when they undock in the Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft and land in Kazakhstan about 3-1/2 hours later.

When the Expedition 37 trio returns home this Sunday they will have completed a 5-1/2 month stay in space. The station's newest Expedition 38 trio will live and work in space until May 2014.

Expedition 38 officially begins when the home-bound trio undocks. Kotov will become station commander for the second time since Expedition 23 in 2010. Staying behind are veteran station residents Mikhail Tyurin and Koichi Wakata; Rick Mastracchio, a veteran of three shuttle missions; and Mike Hopkins and Sergey Ryazanskiy, who are both on their first missions.

All nine crew members will participate in a joint crew news conference Friday Nov. 8 at 8:50 a.m. during their very busy four days together. The crew will talk about the upcoming 15th anniversary of the space station's construction (the station has been continuously occupied for 13 years).

Read about the joint crew news conference: http://www.nasa.gov/press/2013/november/three-space-station-crews-answer-media-questions-from-orbit/

They will also discuss the spacewalk that takes place the very next day when Kotov and Ryazanskiy carry the Olympic torch outside the station. The torch, delivered by Expedition 38 and returning home with Expedition 37, will light the flame at the opening of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia.

For more information about the International Space Station (ISS), visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/index.html

Images (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: NASA / NASA TV.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch