New Flight Engineers Join Expedition 24

Three new crew members arrived at the International Space Station joining Expedition 24. Flight Engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin, Doug Wheelock and Shannon Walker docked the Soyuz TMA-19 to the aft end of the Zvezda service module Thursday at 6:21 p.m. EDT.

At 8:52 p.m. the hatches were opened between the station and the Soyuz spacecraft. The new crew joined Commander Alexander Skvortsov and Flight Engineers Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Mikhail Kornienko and began safety briefings and familiarization activities.

Image above: The Expedition 24 crew members, clockwise from bottom, Commander Alexander Skvortsov and Flight Engineers Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Doug Wheelock, Mikhail Kornienko, Fyodor Yurchikhin and Shannon Walker. Credit: NASA

Johnson Space Center Director Mike Coats and NASA Spaceflight Administrator Bill Gerstenmaier were in Russia and offered their congratulations to the new station crew members. Family, friends and co-workers of the crew also offered their best wishes during a live video conference shortly after hatch opening.

Before the Soyuz TMA-19 arrived, the station crew shifted its sleep schedule to greet the new arrivals. The six-member crew slept in on Friday and will take a half day off on Saturday before beginning orientation activities onboard the orbiting laboratory.

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

Crew Does Maintenance, Science; Soyuz Launch Date Approaches

The International Space Station’s Expedition 24 crew began the week Monday with a variety of science experiments.

Flight Engineer Tracy Caldwell Dyson was scheduled to reinstall an old pump into the U.S. segment’s oxygen generation system, in an effort to coax it back into action to support the increase of the crew to six people which will begin Thursday.

Flight Engineer Mikhail Kornienko restarted the Elektron oxygen generation system in the Russian segment over the weekend.

Commander Alexander Skvortsov conducted an observation with the Rusalka experiment, which is a test of procedures for remote determination of methane and carbon dioxide content in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Skvortsov also assisted Kornienko in a session with the Russian Pilot-M experiment. Pilot-M tests piloting skill in simulations on a laptop under stopwatch control and studies the response of cosmonauts to the effects of stress factors in flight.

Image above: The Soyuz TMA-19 spacecraft is rolled out by train to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Sunday, June 13, 2010. Credit: NASA/Carla Cioffi

Caldwell Dyson took photographs of the moon for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency educational program known as ISS Moon Score. The purpose of this program is to create a musical score using photos of the moon taken at different times in the lunar cycle, while the crew is floating naturally in the microgravity environment.

Following the rollout of their Soyuz TMA-19 spacecraft to the launch pad Sunday, Expedition 24 Flight Engineers Doug Wheelock, Shannon Walker and Fyodor Yurchikhin met Monday with the Russian State Commission of top space officials and conducted their final pre-launch Crew News Conference at their Cosmonaut Hotel crew quarters. Everything is on track for launch Tuesday at 5:35 p.m. EDT. The new crew members are slated to dock to the station’s Zvezda service module Thursday at 6:25 p.m.

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