NASA ISS Expedition 30 crew Departure: Hatches close on Soyuz TMA-22

The Expedition Crew 30 and 31 prior to departure.

Expedition 31 Commander Oleg Kononenko (left) and Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank prepare to close the hatches between the International Space Station and the Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft. Credit: NASA

Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineers Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin have said their farewells, entered the Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft and closed the hatches at 1:12 a.m. EDT.

They will undock from the International Space Station at 4:18 a.m. ending Expedition 30 and landing in Kazakhstan three and a half hours later.

The Soyuz will perform a deorbit burn before the descent module separates from the rest of the Russian spacecraft and enters the Earth’s atmosphere.

Afterwards, the Soyuz will deploy several parachutes slowing its descent and then fire three small engines to soften its landing in the steppe of Kazakhstan.

Expedition 26 Soyuz Landing - Alexander Kaleri

Expedition 26 Flight Engineer Alexander Kaleri listens to reporters questions while wearing a traditional Kazakh hat at the Kustanay, Kazakhstan airport on Wednesday, March 16, 2011 after he and fellow crew members Scott Kelly and Oleg Skripochka landed in their Soyuz TMA-01M capsule near the town of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan. 

NASA Astronaut Kelly, Russian Cosmonauts Skripochka and Kaleri are returning from almost six months onboard the International Space Station where they served as members of the Expedition 25 and 26 crews. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Expedition 26 Soyuz Landing - Oleg Skripochka

Expedition 26 Flight Engineer Oleg Skripochka listens to reporters questions in traditional Kazakh dress at the Kustanay, Kazakhstan airport on Wednesday, March 16, 2011 after he and fellow crew members Scott Kelly and Alexander Kaleri landed in their Soyuz TMA-01M capsule near the town of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan.

NASA Astronaut Kelly, Russian Cosmonauts Skripochka and Kaleri are returning from almost six months onboard the International Space Station where they served as members of the Expedition 25 and 26 crews. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Expedition 26 Soyuz Landing - Kazakhstan

Russian support personnel work to help get crew members out of the Soyuz TMA-01M spacecraft shortly after the capsule landed with Expedition 26 Commander Scott Kelly and Flight Engineers Oleg Skripochka and Alexander Kaleri near the town of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan on Wednesday, March 16, 2011.



A Russian all terrain vehicle (ATV) takes Expedition 26 Commander Scott Kelly to a helicopter from the Soyuz TMA-01M spacecraft shortly after the capsule landed with Kelly and Expedition 26 Flight Engineers Oleg Skripochka and Alexander Kaleri near the town of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan on Wednesday, March 16, 2011.

NASA Astronaut Kelly, Russian Cosmonauts Skripochka and Kaleri are returning from almost six months onboard the International Space Station where they served as members of the Expedition 25 and 26 crews. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Expedition 26 Commander Scott Kelly is helped as he exits a Russian all terrain vehicle (ATV) that delivered him to a helicopter from the Soyuz TMA-01M spacecraft shortly after the capsule landed with Kelly and Expedition 26 Flight Engineers Oleg Skripochka and Alexander Kaleri near the town of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan on Wednesday, March 16, 2011.

NASA Astronaut Kelly, Russian Cosmonauts Skripochka and Kaleri are returning from almost six months onboard the International Space Station where they served as members of the Expedition 25 and 26 crews. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

NASA, Soyuz: New Crew Arrives at International Space Station

A Russian Soyuz capsule arrived at the International Space Station on Friday with a trio of astronauts, bringing the orbital outpost back to full staffing after a failed cargo ship launch in August disrupted flight schedules.

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA's Don Pettit and the European Space Agency's Andre Kuipers blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday for the space station, a $100 billion research complex that orbits about 240 miles above Earth.

Their two-day trip in the cramped capsule ended at 10:19 a.m. EST (1519 GMT) when the Soyuz slipped into the Earth-facing docking port on the station's Rassvet module.

The docking occurred about three hours after another botched Russian launch, the fifth this year.

An unmanned Soyuz-2 rocket carrying a Russian communications satellite lifted off from Russia's Plesetsk space center at 7:08 a.m. EST (1208 GMT), but failed to reach orbit after a third-stage engine failure.


The rocket and its payload crashed in Siberia, according to the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

There was no immediate word about whether the Soyuz-2 failure will impact upcoming launches, including a Soyuz flight slated for Wednesday to put six Globalstar mobile communications satellites into orbit.

The engine on the Soyuz-2 rocket lost Friday is different than the one used on the rocket that launches space station cargo and crews, NASA said.

"This is unlikely to have any effect on operations to the International Space Station," said NASA spokesman Joshua Buck.

The next cargo run to the space station is scheduled for launch on January 25.

At a news conference broadcast on NASA Television following the new crew's arrival, Russian space agency officials acknowledged the country's aerospace industry is in trouble.

"There are problems," Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin said through a translator. "There is aging of many resources. We need to optimize everything. We need to modernize."

"It's also aging of human resources," Popovkin said. "Given the troubles we had in the '90s, quite a lot of people left and nobody came to replace them."

Russian launch troubles kept the space station short-staffed for most of the past three months.

Crew flights to the station were delayed while Russian engineers scrambled to find and fix the cause of a Progress cargo ship engine failure on August 24. The engine is virtually identical to the one used on the Russian Soyuz capsules that ferry crew.

The accident was traced to contamination or a blockage in a fuel line.

Russia beefed up its inspection and quality control systems and resumed flying on October 30.

Russian launch failures this year also claimed a long-awaited mission to return samples from the Martian moon Phobos. The 13-ton Phobos-Grunt spacecraft is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere between January 9 and 16.

The newly arrived crew at the space station joined station commander Dan Burbank and two cosmonauts, who have been aboard the outpost since November 16.

"It is so great to have all six crew members on board the space station," said NASA's head of human spaceflight Bill Gerstenmaier.

"This will be an exciting period for the crew. They have many activities over the next several months."

With the return to a six-member crew, the station can resume full-time science operations, including medical research, physics experiments and astronomical observations.

The crew also will begin preparations for the arrival of the first commercial cargo ship.

Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, is scheduled to launch its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule on February 7 for a trial run to the station.

The debut flight of a second U.S. supplier, Orbital Sciences Corp., is expected later in the year.

ISS Expedition 30: Crew Members pose for photoshot

At the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the three crew members who will round out the Expedition 30 crew on the International Space Station pose for pictures following a fit check in their Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft Dec. 9, 2011.

NASA Flight Engineer Don Pettit (left), Soyuz Commander Oleg Kononenko (center) and Flight Engineer Andre Kuipers (right) will launch Dec. 21 to the station from Baikonur.

Credit: NASA

NASA Expedition 29 Crew: Launch slated for Nov 14, 2011

Image above: Expedition 29 crew members pictured from the left on the front row are Commander Mike Fossum and Flight Engineer Dan Burbank. 

Pictured from the left on the back row are Flight Engineers Satoshi Furukawa, Sergei Volkov, Anatoly Ivanishin and Anton Shkaplerov. Photo credit: NASA

Mike Fossum commands the Expedition 29 crew which will continue to support research into the effects of microgravity on the human body, biology, physics and materials.

Fossum and Flight Engineers Sergei Volkov and Satoshi Furukawa launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on June 7 aboard the Soyuz TMA-02M spacecraft, docking their Soyuz to the Rassvet module on the Russian segment of the station on June 9.

According to the current plan, the Soyuz 28 spacecraft, carrying NASA's Dan Burbank and Russia's Anatoly Ivanishin and Anton Shkaplerov, will launch Nov. 14 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and arrive at the station on Nov. 16.

› Read more about Expedition 29 on NASA portal

NASA ISS Expedition 27 and ISS crew

NASA ISS: ESA Leonardo Module: Crews of Expedition 26 and STS-133 inside

NASA Shuttle Endeavour: Coming Home

This view of the port side of space shuttle Endeavour's cargo bay was recorded after separation from the International Space Station on Feb. 19, 2010, as the STS-130 astronauts prepared for a Feb. 21 landing, after spending over a week working in tandem with the Expedition 22 crew members aboard the station.

Other than the docking system hardware, the cargo bay is empty after delivering the Tranquility node and the new cupola to the orbital outpost.

Image Credit: NASA

Arctic Expedition Investigates Climate Change and Alternative Fuels

Scientists from the Marine Biogeochemistry and Geology and Geophysics sections of the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) organized and led a team of university and government scientists on an Arctic expedition to initiate methane hydrate exploration in the Beaufort Sea and determine the spatial variation of sediment contribution to Arctic climate change.

Utilising the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Polar Sea as a research platform, three cross-shelf transects were surveyed and sampled off Alaska's North Slope at Hammerhead, Thetis Island and Halkett representing three regions of the Alaskan shelf.

The expedition integrated expertise in coastal geophysics, sediment geochemistry, dissolved and free methane fluxes through the water column and into the atmosphere, sediment and water column microbiology and biogeochemistry and detailed characterization of the sub-seafloor geology.

"The objective of the sampling is to help determine variations in the shallow sediment and water column methane sources, methane cycling and the subsequent flux to the atmosphere," said Richard Coffin, chief scientist, NRL Chemistry Division.

The content, location and distribution of methane in hydrate is variable and controlled by geothermal gradients and biological and thermal methane production. Large deposits of methane hydrates, frozen mixtures of hydrocarbon gas (mostly methane) and water, occur over large areas of the ocean floor. International research has begun with a primary goal of obtaining the methane in these hydrates as an energy source.

During the 12-day expedition, Methane In The Arctic Shelf and Slope (MITAS-1), the crew conducted 34 conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) water column casts using a rosette of Niskin bottles and collected sediment samples from 14 piston cores, three vibrocores and 20 multicores.

Regions selected for this study were based on the review of Minerals Management Service and U.S. Geologic Survey (USGS) seismic data with specific sample locations decided onboard through review of the 3.5 Kilohertz (kHz) sub-bottom profiler data.

The MITAS-1 crew focused on six primary goals to include:

+ Acquire and integrate seismic, acoustic, temperature, geochemical, and lithostratigraphic data for evaluation of deep sediment hydrate distributions.

+ Estimate spatial variation and controls on the vertical methane flux as it relates to variations in lithostratigraphy, geologic structures, water column temperatures, heat flow, seismic and acoustic profiles, and water depth.

+ Develop and calibrate models to evaluate sediment hydrate loading, hydrate destabilization through warming, and the fate of methane after destabilization.

+ Determine and model the transport of methane from the sediment through the water column into the atmosphere.

+ Study the control of total methane emissions by microbial methane consumption in the sediment and in the water column.

+ Study the contribution of methane to the benthic and pelagic carbon cycling.

The expedition was supported by NRL, Office of Naval Research (ONR), Department of Energy (DoE), Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER) and the German Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-Geomar). Future expeditions will also include scientists from Scotland's Herriot-Watt University, Norway's University of Bergen and GNS Science of New Zealand.

"Our project is intended to initiate a long-term collaboration in future expeditions in the Beaufort Sea and other regions of the Arctic Ocean," said Coffin.