26 September 2010
The International Space Station
The International Space Station, Earth’s largest artificial satellite, is orbiting at an altitude of about 350 km.
Credit: NASA
On 25 September 2010, the crew of the International Space Station Expedition 24 landed in Kazakhstan, aboard a Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft, concluding a 6-month stay, onboard the International Space Station (ISS). The crew were Commander Alexander Skvortsov, Flight Engineers Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Mikhail Kornienko. The Soyuz TMA-18 undocked from the ISS on 24 September 2010.
Russian recovery teams were on the landing site, to help the crew exit Soyuz, and adapt to Earth’s gravity. Skvortsov and Kornienko will return to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, near Moscow. Caldwell Dyson will return to NASA’s Johnson Space Center, aboard a NASA plane.
The three spacemen launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, in April 2010. As members of the Expedition 23 and 24 crews, they stayed 174 days on the orbiting outpost.
The ISS is now occupied by Doug Wheelock, who assumed command of the station, on 22 September, NASA Flight Engineer Shannon Walker and Russian Flight Engineer Fyodor Yurchikhin, who arrived in mid-June.
The new Expedition 25 crew members are NASA’s Scott Kelly, Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka, will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, on 7 October 2010, and will reach the ISS about 48 hours later.
References
NASA
www.nasa.gov
Aymen Mohamed Ibrahem
Senior Astronomy Specialist