Astronauts
aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are preparing their orbital
laboratory for a crew swap that will begin with the arrival of three new spaceflyers
next month.
ISS
Expedition 15 commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and flight engineer Oleg Kotov, both
Russian cosmonauts, are eagerly awaiting the planned Oct. 12 arrival of their
Expedition 16 relief crew, though their U.S. crewmate Clayton Anderson will
stay aboard for the initial days of the new mission, NASA managers said
Tuesday.
"It's
hard to believe that it has already been 170 days in its execution," NASA's
lead Expedition 15 flight director Bob Dempsey said of the mission during a
briefing at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Yurchikhin
and Kotov will hand control of the space station over to Expedition 16
commander Peggy Whitson and flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko, who are slated to
launch
toward the ISS with Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor --
Malaysia's first astronaut -- on Oct. 10 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in
Kazakhstan.
The Expedition
15 astronauts are completing a six-month mission that began in mid-April. Since
then, they have staged three spacewalks and hosted two visiting NASA space shuttle
crews to continue assembly of the half-built ISS. Yurchikhin and Kotov are due
to return to Earth with Shukor on Oct. 21 while Anderson takes up his post as
an Expedition 16 flight engineer.
Yurchihkhin
and his Expedition 15 crewmates are also expected to clear a docking port for
the incoming Expedition 16 astronauts on Thursday, when they will move their Soyuz
TMA-10 spacecraft to a berth on the aft end of the space station's Zvezda
service module.
The Russian-built
Progress 25 cargo ship that previously occupied the Zvezda docking port was
discarded last week.
Earlier
today, Russian flight controllers in Moscow were expected to order the
disposable space freighter to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere after a week of
propulsion system tests. Russian flight controllers are also expected to retract
a pair of older solar arrays on the station's Zarya control module later this
week to clear space for future ISS radiators, NASA said.
Busy ISS
work ahead
Whitson,
the space
station's first female commander, is NASA's first astronaut to serve a
second tour aboard the ISS. She last flew to the station in 2002 as an Expedition
5 flight engineer and NASA's first ISS science officer.
"Her
previous experience is going to be very valuable to us as we take on this very
challenging increment," said Holly Ridings, NASA's lead Expedition 16
flight director, in mission briefing. Malenchenko, who commanded the ISS in
2003 during Expedition 7, also brings vital experience to the upcoming flight,
she added.
Ridings
said Whitson and her Expedition 16 crewmates will have no shortages of
challenges during their six-month mission.
On Oct. 23,
just two days after the Shukor and the Expedition 15 crew depart the ISS, NASA
plans to launch the space shuttle Discovery's STS-120 astronauts on a 14-day
construction mission to the ISS. That shuttle mission will deliver a vital
connecting node to the ISS, relocate an older solar array truss and ferry NASA astronaut
Daniel Tani to replace Anderson as part of the Expedition 16 crew.
More tricky
space station construction work and up to two more shuttle missions - each of
which will ferry a replacement Expedition 16 crewmember to the ISS - are
planned during the long-duration flight. The launch of unmanned Russian
cargo ships and Europe's first Automated Transfer Vehicle - a robotic resupply
ship dubbed Jules Verne - are also scheduled while Whitson and Malenchenko are
aboard the station.
"It's
a challenging sequence, but we're going to get there," Ridings said.
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