{"id":16812,"date":"2014-11-22T17:50:13","date_gmt":"2014-11-22T09:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/international-crew-set-for-launch-to-space-station-sunday\/"},"modified":"2014-11-22T17:50:13","modified_gmt":"2014-11-22T09:50:13","slug":"international-crew-set-for-launch-to-space-station-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/international-crew-set-for-launch-to-space-station-sunday\/","title":{"rendered":"International crew set for launch to space station Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS \u201cSPACE PLACE\u201d & USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n

\"The
The Soyuz TMA-15M crew at the Baikonur Cosmodrome (left to right): NASA astronaut Terry Virts, Soyuz commander Anton Shkaplerov and ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In clear but frigid weather, Russian engineers hauled a Soyuz rocket to the launch pad Friday, setting the stage for launch Sunday on a six-hour flight to ferry a veteran Russian cosmonaut, a NASA shuttle pilot and a European rookie to the International Space Station, boosting the lab\u2019s crew back to six and kicking off a busy winter of research and assembly work.<\/p>\n

Soyuz TMA-15M commander Anton Shkaplerov, flanked on the left by flight engineer Samantha Cristoforetti and on the right by NASA astronaut Terry Virts, are scheduled for liftoff from complex 31 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:01:14 p.m. EST Sunday (GMT-5; 3:01 a.m. Monday local time), roughly the moment Earth\u2019s rotation moves the pad into the plane of the station\u2019s orbit.<\/p>\n

Soyuz flights are more commonly launched from pad 1, the same firing stand used by Yuri Gagarin at the dawn of the space age, but required maintenance prompted the Russians to use complex 31 for the TMA-15M launch, the first use of the facility for a piloted Soyuz flight since a previous station-bound crew took off from there in October 2012.<\/p>\n

If all goes well, Shkaplerov and his crewmates will oversee a four-orbit rendezvous with the space station, moving in for docking at the Earth-facing Rassvet module around 9:53 p.m. Sunday. Standing by to welcome them aboard will be Expedition 42 commander Barry \u201cButch\u201d Wilmore, Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova, who were launched to the outpost Sept. 25.<\/p>\n

Wilmore and company have had the station to themselves since Nov. 9 when Maxim Suraev, European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst and NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman departed and returned to Earth. With the arrival of the TMA-15M crew, the focus of station operations will shift back to a full slate of research activity and a series of spacewalks next year to prepare the lab for dockings by new commercial crew ferry craft now under development in the United States.<\/p>\n

Serova is the first female cosmonaut assigned to a long-duration flight aboard the station. A half dozen female NASA astronauts have lived aboard the complex during the 14 years it has been staffed, but Cristoforetti is the first woman assigned to a long-duration flight by the European Space Agency.<\/p>\n

A veteran fighter pilot and a captain in the Italian air force, Cristoforetti\u2019s resume reads like a roadmap to orbit with a master\u2019s degree in mechanical engineering, expertise in aerospace propulsion technology and more than 500 hours flying time in a variety of military aircraft including the AM-X ground-attack fighter-bomber. During a pre-flight news conference, she described herself as \u201csomebody who looks forward to a challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLearning how to be a flight engineer on the Soyuz was extremely gratifying,\u201d she said. \u201cIt kind of brought me back a little bit to flying a new airplane where you have to learn, get familiar with all the systems, the procedures and what you do in a nominal case, what you do if something goes wrong. I\u2019ve always been trained as a single-seat aircraft pilot so it was interesting to learn how to be a three seater where you have a crew you have to work with. A very different mindset. Fun!\u201d<\/p>\n

Virts served as pilot of the shuttle Endeavour during a 2010 space station assembly mission. Like Cristoforetti, he is a veteran Air Force test pilot with 45 combat missions to his credit flying F-16 fighters. But in his case, moving from the shuttle to the Soyuz meant adapting to a smaller crew. And a smaller, more nimble spacecraft.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking forward to flying a different spaceship,\u201d he told CBS News. \u201cI\u2019m a test pilot, and I like flying different airplanes and different vehicles, and so it\u2019s going to be fun to be in a Soyuz. It flies differently than the shuttle, it\u2019s much smaller and it just moves quicker. The flying qualities are different. As a test pilot, I\u2019m looking forward to seeing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked how he viewed the risk of flying on the Russian spacecraft, Virts said he had no concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Soyuz has a great reliability record,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s been flying since the 1960s, and they\u2019ve been flying it safely for decades. So I have a lot of confidence. I\u2019ve gotten to meet a lot of the Russian builders, I\u2019ve been to the factories where they build it, I\u2019ve actually seen our vehicle and been inside of it. We\u2019re very confident.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked what was the most challenging aspect of training for launch on a Soyuz, Shkaplerov joked about falling asleep during simulations \u201cbecause Samantha had prepared so well, we had nothing to do. As a flight engineer, she will do everything, so we just had to take it easy and relax!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut seriously, for some of us flying for the second time the hardest thing was getting to be close with our fellow crew members,\u201d he said. \u201cWe had really not met each other before beginning the training. Then meeting for the first time and learning how to work together and how to live together as one unit as we will be on the space station for six months, that was the challenge, and I think we did it very well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Virts said the most difficult aspect of his training for launch was learning to speak Russian. Cristoforetti already spoke Russian, \u201cso that wasn\u2019t too hard,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, I guess, the greatest challenge was probably the spacewalk training,\u201d she said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have suits in a small size to fit me properly. So that does present a little bit of an additional challenge. \u2026 But on the other hand, as always happens in life, the hardest thing, once you master it, is the one that\u2019s the most gratifying.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Expedition 42 crew faces a busy time in orbit with multiple spacewalks next year to equip the U.S. section of the station with two docking adapters that will allow commercial crew ships being built by Boeing and SpaceX to dock at the outpost. Virts and Wilmore plan to carry out three spacewalks in late January and early February to make preparations for installation of the docking rings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big picture, at least the first couple we\u2019re going to do, will be to get the space station ready to receive American human capsules that are going to be coming to the station in a couple of years,\u201d Virts said. \u201cLaying down cables is going to be the primary goal of the first couple of spacewalks. We\u2019re also going to do some maintenance on the arm to keep the robotic arm in good shape. But getting ready for the American capsules is our main goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with spacewalk preparations, Virts will be focused on research, both hands on and remotely monitoring external payloads.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is lots and lots of science, roughy 170 American experiments and over 70 international ones,\u201d he said during a news conference. \u201cI really like astronomy, and there\u2019s a big instrument on the outside of the station called AMS, Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, there\u2019s also an instrument on the Japanese segment called MAXI. These instruments are looking for anti-matter and super-high-energy particles that come into Earth from all around the galaxy and really beyond the galaxy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think right now we\u2019re in the process of making some pretty amazing discoveries about what the universe is made out of and what exactly is out there. A certain part of what we\u2019re learning is we really didn\u2019t know what we didn\u2019t know. The more you find out about the universe, you realize there are things you didn\u2019t know. But that\u2019s astronomy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Virts also will serve as a test subject for medical research on the effects of weightlessness on human physiology ranging from bone loss to muscle degradation and vision problems. He said about 30 percent of the astronauts who flew short-duration shuttle missions came home with degraded vision that eventually returned to normal, or near normal.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we\u2019re finding that 60 percent of long duration fliers have vision (problems) and some of those don\u2019t correct, I mean they can still see, but you have degraded vision,\u201d he said. \u201cSo one of the main experiments I\u2019m doing is going to be a pretty comprehensive study of vision. I\u2019ll be doing ultrasound on my eyes, an OCT scan (optical coherence tomography), a fundascope, several different cameras looking inside the eye, some ultrasound of my brain and heart and pressure and blood flow into the eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo there\u2019s a very intense focus on that problem right now, astronaut vision,\u201d he said. \u201cSo far, knock on wood, it hasn\u2019t been anything terrible, but it is something we\u2019re noticing and it\u2019s not something we want for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Virts also will work with Cristoforetti on an ESA experiment to study lung function and health in weightlessness.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s an extremely complex setup where we\u2019re going to be breathing a special gas mixture,\u201d she said. \u201cThe idea there is to study gas exchange in the lungs, a very new field, very interesting for fundamental science, to understand better how that works, how your lungs work.\u201d<\/p>\n

The research will help scientists better understand how reduced pressure and exposure to floating particulates inside a spacecraft might affect lung health.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s going to be very interesting because it\u2019s going to be the first experiment that actually takes place in the airlock at a reduced pressure,\u201d Cristoforetti said. \u201cCertainly a very interesting setup.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it won\u2019t be all work and no play. All three TMA-15 crew members said they were especially looking forward to off-duty time and a chance to take in the view from 260 miles up. During his 2010 shuttle flight, Virts\u2019 crew installed the seven-window cupola compartment that offers a picture-window view of Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking at Earth is the most powerful drug you can imagine,\u201d Virts said. \u201cYou just can\u2019t get enough of it, and that\u2019s kind of all you want to do. Not only Earth, but also looking out into space. I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll be spending my time looking at everything. And there are so many amazing things to see, thunderstorms in the Amazon and central Africa, you just can\u2019t get enough of that, especially at dawn, because then you can see both the clouds and the lightning.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to taking in the view, \u201cI also want to get to be good at moving and flying and floating around in space and just living in space,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s different in weightlessness, it\u2019s not like anything you\u2019ve ever experienced on Earth. On my shuttle flight, the learning curve was still going uphill, and I\u2019m looking forward to having more time and actually getting good at being a person who lives in space.\u201d<\/p>\n

Said Shkaplerov: \u201cEveryone knows being an astronaut is a dangerous profession, but it is definitely very interesting, it is so worth it. Everything becomes worth it once you\u2019re able to see the Earth from the window of the space station.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS \u201cSPACE PLACE\u201d & USED WITH PERMISSION The Soyuz TMA-15M crew at the Baikonur Cosmodrome (left to right): NASA astronaut Terry Virts, Soyuz commander Anton Shkaplerov and ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. Credit: NASA In clear but frigid weather, Russian engineers hauled a Soyuz rocket to the launch pad Friday, setting the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1723,4123,4025,4026,4027],"class_list":["post-16812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-anton-shkaplerov","tag-expedition-42","tag-samantha-cristoforetti","tag-soyuz-tma-15m","tag-terry-virts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16812"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}