Three Expedition 39 crew members are wrapping up more than six months aboard the International Space Station as they get set for the journey back to Earth aboard a Soyuz spacecraft Tuesday. Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio of NASA and Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency, will bid farewell to their station crewmates and close the hatches to their Soyuz TMA-11M spacecraft docked to the Rassvet module Tuesday afternoon. NASA Television coverage of the farewells and hatch closure begins at 3 p.m. EDT. nasa.gov/ntv When their Soyuz undocks at 6:36 p.m., it will mark the end of Expedition 39 and the start of Expedition 40 under the command of NASA astronaut Steve Swanson. Wakata, the first Japanese commander of the orbiting complex, passed the helm of the station over to Swanson during a change of command ceremony Monday afternoon. A deorbit burn at 9:04 p.m. will put the Soyuz on track for a parachute-assisted landing in the steppe of Kazakhstan southeast of Dzhezkazgan at 9:58 p.m. (7:58 a.m. Wednesday, Kazakh time). The landing will complete a journey of over 79 million statute miles and more than 3,000 orbits of the Earth for the trio since launching to the station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan back on Nov. 7. Read more: nasa.gov/content/expedition-39-trio-set-to-depart-station/
Posted on: Tue, 13 May 2014 18:58:11 +0000
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