Crew Prepares for Visiting Vehicles

Aboard the International Space Station Monday, the Expedition 23 crew members oversaw the undocking of the ISS Progress 36 cargo craft and reviewed procedures for the upcoming relocation of the Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft.

The ISS Progress 36 cargo ship undocked from the aft end of the Zvezda service module at 7:16 a.m. EDT and fired its thrusters to move to a safe distance away from the International Space Station. Russian engineers will conduct systems tests with the craft until it is deorbited around July 1.

The crew spent time reviewing procedures for the undocking of the Soyuz TMA-17 from Zarya’s Earth-facing port on Wednesday. With Commander Oleg Kotov at the controls, alongside fellow crew members Flight Engineers T.J. Creamer and Soichi Noguchi, the TMA-17 will redock to Zvezda’s free aft end port, which previously was home to the Progress 36.

Image above: The ISS Progress 36 cargo ship is seen shortly after undocking from the International Space Station. Credit: NASA TV

The Soyuz relocation opens up the Earth-facing port of Zarya for the installation of the new Rassvet mini-research module-1. The module will be delivered by space shuttle Atlantis, which is slated to launch Friday on the STS-132 mission. Rassvet, which means “dawn” in Russian, will provide additional storage space and a new docking port for Russian spacecraft.

Flight Engineer Tracy Caldwell Dyson held a conference with STS-132 crew members on Earth regarding robotics operations for the mission.

Creamer worked with the plant research experiment known as Cambium, which seeks definitive evidence that gravity has a direct effect on the cells located under the inner bark where secondary growth occurs in willow seedlings.

Meanwhile, Noguchi worked on a second plant experiment called Waving and Coiling of Arabidopsis at Different Gravity Levels. Also known as WAICO, this European Space Agency experiment studies the interaction of circumnutation (the successive bowing or bending in different directions of the growing tip of the stems and roots) and gravitropism (a tendency to grow toward or away from gravity) in microgravity and Earth gravity of Arabidopsis thaliana.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

---

Visions of Future Past

The Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft is the subject of this long exposure, and is seen as it is rolled out by train to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Friday, Dec. 18, 2009. The launch of the Soyuz spacecraft with Expedition 22 NASA Flight Engineer Timothy J. Creamer of the U.S., Soyuz Commander Oleg Kotov of Russia and Flight Engineer Soichi Noguchi of Japan, occurred on Monday, Dec. 21, 2009.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1655.html

---

ISS Photography: 100 Million Words

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the Expedition 22 crew aboard the International Space Station is about to complete the generation of 100 million words worth of information.

That’s because Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineers Max Suraev, Oleg Kotov, T.J. Creamer, and Soichi Noguchi are expected to snap a total of 100,000 images by the end of their mission in Earth orbit.

Expedition 22 Commander Jeffrey Williams works with test samples in the Human Research Facility 2 Refrigerated Centrifuge as a part of the Nutritional Status Assessment experiment in the International Space Station's Columbus laboratory. Credit: NASA

Williams is setting a record that surpasses his own previous record of 83,856 images taken during Expedition 13 in 2006.

“This week we broke my old Exp. 13 record for number of Earth photos,” Williams “tweeted” from the station. “Later, after landing and recovery, I will post some of best.”

Among those digital still images is this spectacular nighttime image taken of Houston, Texas, the home of Mission Control and astronaut training, and the hub of the International Space Station Program that unites five space agencies and 15 countries in peaceful exploration and scientific research.

Williams and Suraev will end their five-and-a-half-month stay on the station Thursday, when they undock their Soyuz spacecraft and head for a landing in Kazakhstan. They were part of both the Expedition 21 and 22 crews. Kotov, Creamer and Noguchi will stay on orbit, snapping more photos, for two more months before returning home after being part of both the Expedition 22 and 23 crews.

All told, space station crews so far have amassed a total of almost 639,000 images. Those images include photos that document life and work aboard the space station, and photos that document the condition of the home planet from its unique perspective 220 miles above Earth. Their efforts are part of a larger collection that began with Earth observations photos during the Gemini Program of the 1960s. Many of the images are used in scientific research about the Earth, its climate, its resources and the effects humans are having on both.

The Houston metropolitan area at night is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 22 crew member on the International Space Station. Credit: NASA

The recent STS-130 space shuttle mission delivered a new observation deck known as the cupola that offers the largest window ever flown on a spacecraft, and the upcoming STS-131 shuttle mission to the station will deliver the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF), which will provide a new facility dedicated to multi- and hyper-spectral remote sensing and high resolution Earth observation photography to enhance the use of the best optical-quality window ever flown in space, in the U.S. Destiny Laboratory.

For more information about Earth observations photography, visit the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of the Earth at:

http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov

For more information about WORF, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/experiments/WORF.html

For more information about the International Space Station, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition22/iss_photography.html

Soyuz Brings New Expedition 22 Crew Members to Station

ISS022-E-014393 (22 Dec. 2009) --- The Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft approaches the International Space Station, carrying Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, Soyuz commander and Expedition 22 flight engineer; along with NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi, both flight engineers. Docking to the Zarya nadir port occurred at 4:48 p.m. (CST) on Dec. 22, 2009. The trio launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft at 3:52 p.m. on Dec. 20 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. A docked Russian spacecraft is at top left. Photo Credit: NASA

ISS022-E-014302 (22 Dec. 2009) --- The Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft approaches the International Space Station, carrying Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, Soyuz commander and Expedition 22 flight engineer; along with NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi, both flight engineers. Docking to the Zarya nadir port occurred at 4:48 p.m. (CST) on Dec. 22, 2009. The trio launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft at 3:52 p.m. on Dec. 20 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Photo Credit: NASA

ISS022-E-014319 (22 Dec. 2009) --- The Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft approaches the International Space Station, carrying Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, Soyuz commander and Expedition 22 flight engineer; along with NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi, both flight engineers. Docking to the Zarya nadir port occurred at 4:48 p.m. (CST) on Dec. 22, 2009. The trio launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft at 3:52 p.m. on Dec. 20 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Photo Credit: NASA

ISS022-E-014350 (22 Dec. 2009) --- The Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft approaches the International Space Station, carrying Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, Soyuz commander and Expedition 22 flight engineer; along with NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi, both flight engineers. Docking to the Zarya nadir port occurred at 4:48 p.m. (CST) on Dec. 22, 2009. The trio launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft at 3:52 p.m. on Dec. 20 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Photo Credit: NASA

ISS022-E-014370 (22 Dec. 2009) --- The Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft approaches the International Space Station, carrying Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, Soyuz commander and Expedition 22 flight engineer; along with NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi, both flight engineers. Docking to the Zarya nadir port occurred at 4:48 p.m. (CST) on Dec. 22, 2009. The trio launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft at 3:52 p.m. on Dec. 20 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Photo Credit:NASA

ISS022-E-014023 (22 Dec. 2009) --- Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov (left) and Maxim Suraev, both Expedition 22 flight engineers, pose for a photo after Kotov arrived on a Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft with NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer (out of frame) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi (out of frame), both flight engineers. The crew members launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan 3:52 p.m. (CST) on Dec. 20, 2009, and docked to the station at 4:48 p.m. on Dec. 22. Photo Credit: NASA

ISS022-E-014025 (22 Dec. 2009) --- Wearing a festive holiday hat, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi, Expedition 22 flight engineer, ingresses the International Space Station after arriving onboard a Soyuz TMA-17 with NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer (out of frame) and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov (out of frame), both flight engineers. The crew members launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan 3:52 p.m. (CST) on Dec. 20, 2009, and docked to the station at 4:48 p.m. on Dec. 22. Photo Credit: NASA

ISS022-E-014047 (22 Dec. 2009) --- Wearing festive holiday hats, the Expedition 22 crew members are pictured while speaking with officials from Russia, Japan and the United States from the Zvezda Service Module of the International Space Station.

In the front row are NASA astronaut Jeffrey Williams (right), commander; and Russian cosmonaut Maxim Suraev, flight engineer. Pictured on the back row (left to right) are Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi, all flight engineers. Photo Credit: NASA

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/multimedia/exp22_docking_images.html