Two veteran
spaceflyers and South Korea's first astronaut will say farewell to the crew of
the International Space Station (ISS) tonight and prepare to head home.
Expedition
16 commander Peggy Whitson, flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko and South
Korean bioengineer So-yeon Yi will climb aboard their Russian-built Soyuz
TMA-11 tonight and cast off from the station early Saturday. The trio are
aiming for a 4:30 a.m. EDT (0830 GMT) landing on the Central Asian steppes of
Kazakhstan.
"I think
we're going to be ready to go on Saturday," Whitson told SPACE.com this
week via a video link, adding that she's looking forward to seeing family and
friends again in person. "I know I'm not really looking forward to the gravity
part down there."
Whitson and
Malenchenko are in the homestretch of a busy six months in orbit. During their
flight, station astronauts performed five spacewalks and hosted three visiting
NASA space shuttle crews that added new international modules, a laboratory and
a massive Canadian robot to the ISS.
"I really
do think that we've made a major to step to make the station more
international," Whitson said.
Whitson and
Malenchenko turned the station over
to its new commander - Expedition 17 commander Sergei Volkov - and his crew
on Thursday.
Volkov, the
son of famed
cosmonaut Alexander Volkov, is making his first spaceflight and launched
April 8 with Yi and flight engineer Oleg Kononenko.
"We were
able to talk a lot," Volkov said of his father. "He wished good luck for me,
for my crew."
The third
member of Volkov's crew, NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman, was already aboard the
station as part of the Expedition 16 team. He will stay on until his
replacement arrives in June.
Yi,
meanwhile, is completing a 10-day science mission as part of a commercial agreement
between the South Korean government and Russia's Federal Space Agency.
"Time flies
so fast," Yi told reporters earlier this week. "Actually, now I don't want to
go back. I want to fly longer than before."
With
Whitson and Yi taking up two of the three seats aboard their Soyuz capsule,
Saturday's landing will mark the first time women have outnumbered men aboard a
spacecraft in flight. Malenchenko will command the Soyuz flight back to Earth.
"We were
just talking about that," Whitson said, referring to Malenchenko. "I said
'Yuri, this time women out number men on a spacecraft!' ... But he's a great
sport about it."
Returning
to Earth
Preparations
for Saturday's Soyuz landing will actually begin tonight at about 10:00 p.m.
EDT (0200 April 19 GMT), when Whitson, Malenchenko and Yi will say goodbye to
their Expedition 17 counterparts, shut themselves inside their spacecraft and
prepare to cast off from the ISS.
The Soyuz
is due to undock from an Earth-facing berth on the station's Russian-built
Zarya module on Saturday at 1:06 a.m. EDT (0506 GMT), then fire its rocket
engines at 3:40 a.m. EDT (0740 GMT) for about four minutes and 19 seconds in a
braking maneuver to begin the descent back to Earth.
Whitson,
who set
a new record Wednesday for the most days in space by a U.S. astronaut, said
she was looking forward to landing aboard a Russian Soyuz. As the station's first
female commander, she will have about 377 days in orbit across two ISS
missions after tomorrow's planned touchdown, though her 2002 launch and landing
occurred on a NASA shuttle.
"I think
that will be personally satisfying," Whitson said of the Soyuz return. "Another
advantage is that once we undock, we'll be home on the ground in a few hours.
So I think it will be a quick trip."
NASA
will broadcast the undocking and landing of Yi and the station's Expedition 16
crew live on NASA TV beginning Friday at 9:30 p.m. EDT (0130 April 19 GMT). Click here for SPACE.com's ISS mission
updates and NASA TV feed.
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