An American space tourist and two professional astronauts
are closing in on the International Space Station as they prepare to dock at
the orbiting lab early Tuesday.
Expedition 18 commander Michael Fincke of NASA, Russian flight
engineer Yury Lonchakov and space
tourist Richard Garriott are due to arrive at the station tomorrow at about
4:33 a.m. EDT (0833 GMT). The two professional spaceflyers are beginning a
six-month mission to the station, while Garriott plans to spend about 10 days
in space before returning home Oct. 23.
The trio
launched Sunday at 3:01 a.m. EDT (0701 GMT) aboard a Soyuz TMA-13
spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and will dock at an
Earth-facing berth on the space station's Russian-built Zarya module. Once they
arrive at the station, the astronauts will greet the current core station crew,
Expedition 17 commander Sergey Volkov and flight engineers Greg Chamitoff and
Oleg Kononenko, in a welcoming ceremony.
"I'm looking forward to the guys who are coming,"
Chamitoff told SPACE.com last week. "One of them is a space tourist,
and I know he's very excited and we're definitely looking forward to seeing
him."
After the hatches between the station and Soyuz TMA-13 are
opened, Volkov and Garriott will become the first second-generation spaceflyers
to meet in orbit. Garriott is the son of former NASA astronaut Owen Garriott,
who flew aboard the U.S. Skylab space station and shuttle Columbia, while
Volkov is the son of famed cosmonaut Alexander Volkov, a three-time spaceflyer
and long-duration flight veteran.
Garriott, a computer game designer, paid $30 million to
Russia's Federal Space Agency through an agreement brokered by the Vienna,
Va.-based firm Space Adventures to make his trip possible. He is the sixth
space tourist to visit the space station.
Changing space station
Fincke
and Lonchakov plan to spend their mission outfitting the orbital outpost to
host six-person crews, double its current capacity of three astronauts. Both
spaceflyers have made previous trips to the ISS: Fincke was a flight engineer
on the space station's Expedition 9 mission in 2004, and Lonchakov visited the
laboratory in 2001 and 2002. The station has grown in size since both men last
saw it, and will change even more during their stay.
"This time around it will be sized for six people, but
there's only going to be three of us, so I'm looking forward to having that
extra room," Fincke told SPACE.com before launch. "Myself and
my crew, we're experienced at such a level that I really think we're the right
crew to help us get to that next level of a six person crew."
The team will install hardware and equipment for the
transition, including a new kitchen, sleeping cabins, an advanced exercise
device, a water recycling system and a second toilet to arrive on the space
shuttle Endeavour's November STS-126 mission.
The new toilet will be especially welcome, since the
station's current facility broke
last week. In the meantime, station residents will use the toilets aboard
the Soyuz vehicles docked at the ISS until they can fix the balky loo, which
also broke in June.
"The problem we had just a few months ago, it really
emphasized the importance of having a space potty," Fincke said in a
pre-launch interview. "This time we'll have two, so if this one breaks,
we'll have another one."
Bigger than a jumbo jet
The space station, now nearly completely assembled, will be
a bigger destination for Garriott than it was the last time a paying visitor
stopped by, when American entrepreneur Charles Simonyi came in April 2007.
Since then, new rooms have been added to the station, including Europe's
Columbus module and Japan's massive Kibo laboratory - a science facility the
size of a tour bus.
"It's coming very close to completion and I'll be
flying after, you know, 90 percent of it I think will be put together,"
Garriott told SPACE.com before launch. "So I'll get to see it in pretty
close to its full glory you might say, which I think is particularly exciting.
The internal volume of International Space Station is going to be, by the time
I'm there, bigger than a jumbo jet."
Garriott has planned a busy schedule for himself, packed
with science experiments, educational activities and Earth observation. His
father, who watched the launch from Kazakhstan, is serving as chief scientist
for his son's mission.
NASA will broadcast the Expedition 18 crew's arrival to
the International Space Station live on NASA TV beginning at 4:00 a.m. EDT
(0800 GMT). 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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