• Two New Crew Members Arrive at International Space Station

    From baalke@1:2320/100 to sci.space.news on Thu Apr 20 22:53:11 2017
    From Newsgroup: sci.space.news

    April 20, 2017

    RELEASE 17-044

    Two New Crew Members Arrive at International Space Station

    After a six-hour flight, NASA astronaut Jack Fischer and cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos arrived at the International Space Station at 9:18 a.m. EDT Thursday where they will continue important scientific research.

    The two launched aboard a Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:13 a.m. (1:13 p.m. Baikonur time), orbited Earth four times, and docked at the space station.

    The arrival of Fischer and Yurchikhin increased the station's crew complement to five. The two join Expedition 51 Commander Peggy Whitson of NASA and
    Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos and Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency). The Expedition 51 crew members will spend more
    than four months conducting approximately 250 science investigations in
    fields such as biology, Earth science, human research, physical sciences
    and technology development.

    Novitskiy and Pesquet will remain aboard the station until early June.
    Fischer and Yurchikhin are scheduled to remain aboard the station until September, along with Whitson, whose stay aboard the station was extended
    into Expedition 52 by an agreement recently signed between NASA and Roscosmos.

    The expanded Expedition 51 crew soon will conduct new science investigations arriving on Orbital ATKrCOs seventh NASA-contracted commercial resupply mission Saturday, April 22. Investigations arriving will include an antibody investigation that could increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy drugs
    for cancer treatment and an advanced plant habitat for studying plant physiology and growth of fresh food in space. Another new investigation
    bound for the U.S. National Laboratory will look at using magnetized cells
    and tools to make it easier to handle cells and cultures, and improve
    the reproducibility of experiments. Cygnus also is carrying 38 CubeSats, including many built by university students from around the world, as
    part of the QB50 program. The CubeSats are scheduled to deploy from either
    the spacecraft or space station in the coming months.

    Fischer and Whitson are scheduled to take part in the fifth spacewalk
    of the year on May 12. The pairrCOs main task will be to replace an avionics box on the starboard truss called an ExPRESS Logistics Carrier, a storage platform. The box houses electrical, and command and data routing equipment for science experiments and replacement hardware stored outside the station. The new avionics box is arriving aboard Orbital ATKrCOs Cygnus cargo craft
    on Saturday, April 22.

    The crew members also are scheduled to receive one Russian Progress resupply mission delivering several tons of food, fuel, supplies and research.

    For more than 16 years, humans have lived and worked continuously aboard
    the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and demonstrating
    new technologies, making research breakthroughs not possible on Earth
    that will enable long-duration human and robotic exploration into deep
    space. A global endeavor, more than 200 people from 18 countries have
    visited the unique microgravity laboratory that has hosted more than 1,900 research investigations from researchers in more than 95 countries.

    Follow Jack Fischer on his first space mission at:

    https://twitter.com/Astro2fish

    Get breaking news, images and features from the station on Instagram and Twitter:

    http://instagram.com/iss

    and

    http://www.twitter.com/Space_Station

    -end-

    .
    Press Contacts

    Kathryn Hambleton
    Headquarters, Washington
    202-358-1100
    kathryn.hambleton@nasa.gov

    Dan Huot
    Johnson Space Center, Houston
    281-483-5111
    daniel.g.huot@nasa.gov

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