* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Expedition 13

Blobrana · L

Two days after blasting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the Soyuz capsule automatically docked with the international space station on Saturday just after 8:19 a.m., bringing Brazil's first astronaut, a new Russian-American crew and a fresh load of supplies, equipment and experiments.

Blobrana · L

A Russian Soyuz rocket with the Expedition 13 crew aboard a Soyuz TMA-8 spacecraft will launch to the International Space Station, on March 30th, 2006, at 02:30 GMT (9:30p.m. EST on March 29), from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.
The capsule will remain at the station for about six months, providing an escape pod for the crew.

Blobrana · L

The Russian Space Agency is set to begin preparations for a launch at the end of next month that will take a new crew of astronauts to the International Space Station.

The 13th International Space Station (ISS) crew will leave for the station on March 30 from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan. Preparations for the launch are to begin in the middle of this month, following delivery to Kazakhstan of a Soyuz-TMA-8 spacecraft from the Moscow Region.
The crew includes Russian astronaut Pavel Vinogradov, American astronaut Jeffrey Williams and Brazilian astronaut Marcos Pontes, who will return after his short program with the 12th ISS expedition.
NASA has agreed to pay the Russian agency $21 million for taxiing the American astronaut to and from the station. It will be the first time that NASA will pay money to the Russian agency after it suspended Shuttle spacecraft flights.

The agency also plans to launch a Soyuz carrier rocket with the second European Galileo global positioning and communications system satellite GIOVE B in 2006.
The first GIOVE A satellite of the Galileo project, which envisions the creation of a satellite group consisting of 30 spacecraft, was launched by a Russian space carrier from Baikonur on December 28, 2005.
The Galileo will be Europe's own global navigation satellite system, providing a highly accurate global positioning service under civilian control. It will operate in conjunction with GPS and GLONASS, the two other global satellite navigation systems.

Russian Space Agency head Anatoly Perminov said earlier that the agency was planning to reach an agreement with NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) in order to combine GPS, GLONASS and Galileo into a unified global positioning system.

Blobrana · L

The launch of Russia’s spacecraft Soyuz with a next crew of the International Space Station has been postponed to a later date.

"The launch of Soyuz TMA-8 with the crew of the 13th resident mission and a Brazilian astronaut that was planned for March 22 has been postponed for a week for technical reasons. The change of the launch of Soyuz has also affected the time of the cargo ship Progress M-56" - Vyacheslav Davidenko, Federal Space Agency spokesman.

Malfunctions of several devices of the control systems had been found out during the pre-flight preparation of the manned spacecraft.
The systems have been replaced with devices from a next Soyuz that is to fly to the ISS.
The replacement and tests have taken time, causing the delay of the launch.

Soyuz TMA-8 is to deliver to the ISS Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov, NASA astronaut Jeffrey Williams and Brazil’s first space tourist Markus Pontez, who is to return to the earth after a brief visiting mission together Valery Tokarev and William McArthur, the Russian- American crew working in the ISS since October.
The Progress supply ship was to be launched on April 24.

Progress is to deliver into orbit 2,000 kilograms of cargoes.

"There is a sufficient reserve of the water, food oxygen and fuel at the ISS, and for this reason the delay with the launch will not affect the vital activity of the crew and the station" - Vyacheslav Davidenko.

Source Tass

Blobrana · L

NASA and its international partners have selected astronaut Jeffrey Williams and Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov as the next crew for the International Space Station, designated as Expedition 13.

Williams is a U.S. Army colonel and veteran of one space flight. He will serve as Expedition 13 flight engineer and NASA science officer. He flew aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis as a mission specialist in May 2000 on a 10-day space station assembly mission. During that mission, he performed a spacewalk lasting almost seven hours. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, N.Y. He has master's degrees from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, and the Naval War College, Newport, R.I. He was selected as an astronaut in 1996.

Vinogradov, a veteran of one long-duration spaceflight, will command Expedition 13. He flew aboard a Soyuz spacecraft to the Russian Mir Space Station as flight engineer for the 24th resident crew in 1997, a 198-day mission. During the mission, he performed five spacewalks. A graduate of Moscow Aviation Institute, he was selected as a cosmonaut in 1992.

Astronaut Mike Fincke and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin were selected to train as the back-up crew.

Williams and Vinogradov will launch aboard a Russian Soyuz (TMA-8) in March 2006. They will discuss their mission during a news conference Thursday, Jan. 12 at 3 p.m. EST (2 p.m. CST), at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston.

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