Space Tourist, Station Crew to Launch Sunday

A new crew is poised to launch to the International Space Station early Sunday to help outfit the laboratory for double-sized occupancy.

Expedition 18 commander Michael Fincke and flight engineer Yury Lonchakov are scheduled to launch aboard a Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome spaceport in Kazakhstan Sunday at 3:01 a.m. EDT (0701 GMT). Set to join them on the journey is space tourist Richard Garriott, the first American second-generation spaceflyer. His father, former NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, will be watching the launch from the ground at Baikonur.

Fincke and Lonchakov are set to begin a six-month stay aboard the orbiting outpost, while Garriot is flying under a $30 million deal between Russia?s Federal Space Agency and the Vienna, Va.-based firm Space Adventures. He is slated to return Oct. 23 aboard a Soyuz vessel carrying two current space station crewmembers, Expedition 17 commander Sergei Volkov and flight engineer Oleg Kononenko, home to Earth. Coincidentally, Volkov, son of Russian cosmonaut Alexander Volkov, is also a second-generation space traveler.

Garriot, a a computer game developer from Austin, Texas, will be the 6th space tourist to fly in space. He plans a packed schedule of science experiments for his roughly 10-day trip. His father, who flew on the Skylab 3 mission in 1973 and rode aboard the shuttle Columbia?s STS-9 trip in 1983, will serve as chief scientist for his son?s mission.

Fincke and Lonchakov are both veteran astronauts: Fincke served as flight engineer on 2004?s Expedition 9 mission to the International Space Station (ISS, while Lonchakov rode aboard the space shuttle Endeavour?s STS-100 mission in 2001, and a Soyuz flight to the station in 2002. Lonchakov, chief cosmonaut at Russia?s Yuri Gagarin Training Center, will serve as commander of Sunday?s Soyuz trip.

When the trio arrive at the space station, there will be no working toilet aboard. The lone facility at the station broke on Thursday, forcing the current crew to use the toilet aboard the Soyuz vehicle docked at the lab. When the new flight arrives, its crew use the potty aboard their own Soyuz, if the toilet is still broken.

Space station expansion

The two are set to join NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff, an Expedition 17 flight engineer currently aboard the ISS, to help convert the station to host six-person crews, expanded from its current crew compliment of three.

?It?s exciting to be on the 18th expedition to our beautiful space station, and we are right at the cusp of going from a three-person crew to a six-person crew,? Fincke said in a NASA preflight interview. ?Our crew, Expedition 18, we are ready to make that transition. It?s going to require several space shuttles to come up and give us the missing pieces.?

Some necessary supplies and equipment for the transition are due to be launched aboard the space shuttle Endeavour?s STS-126 flight in November, and Discovery?s STS-119 mission in early 2009. Endeavour is also scheduled to ferry new Expedition 18 flight engineer Sandra Magnus to the station, and carry Chamitoff home. Magnus is slated to be replaced by Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata, arriving on next year?s Discovery flight.

To get the station ready to accommodate more people, the Expedition 18 crewmembers will help install new sleeping cabins, new kitchen equipment, a new toilet (to supplement the current balky one), and a machine to recycle urine into drinkable water.

?On one hand, the engineer in me says it's probably purer water than most we've ever drunk before, but on the other hand it's still kind of funny to know where that water's been,? Fincke said. ?But we're a close crew.?

Fincke and Lonchakov are also scheduled to perform a spacewalk in Russian-built Orlan spacesuits in late December to install new science experiments.

?The name of the hardware is Explorer Impulse; it is intended for geophysics studies, for measuring velocity of charged particles, for defining parameters of the ambient environment around the station,? Lonchakov said. ?So our objectives are very interesting. They are substantial but feasible.?

The crew will also be involved in many science experiments during their stay in space, with a heavy focus on life sciences research that can help pave the way for future manned space exploration missions.

?Those experiments address different biological processes that take place in zero gravity, how zero gravity impacts the habitable environment, plants, animals, those life forms that are expected to be used for future interplanetary flights to moon and Mars,? Lonchakov said.

One such project will study a Russian device called a braslet (meaning ?bracelet?) that can be used to gently restrict the flow of blood in astronauts? legs, and could make the transition to the microgravity environment of space more comfortable.

The Expedition 18 crew is set to launch into space on Sunday, Oct. 12 at 3:01 a.m. EDT (0701 GMT). NASA will broadcast the launch live via NASA TV. Click here for SPACE.com's NASA TV feed and space station mission updates.

Richard Garriott is chronicling his spaceflight training and mission at his personal Web site: www.richardinspace.com.

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