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New Space Station Crew Launches from Kazakhstan

30 March 2006

Station crewmembers photograph total solar eclipse from space

By Cheryl Pellerin
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington – Commander Pavel Vinogradov and NASA Science Officer Jeffrey Williams, the 13th International Space Station crew, launched March 29 aboard their Soyuz spacecraft to begin a six-month stay in space.

With the Expedition 13 crew is Marcos Pontes, the first Brazilian astronaut to go into space. Pontes, a lieutenant colonel in the Brazilian Air Force, is flying under a contract with Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency. He will spend eight days on the station.

The Soyuz capsule reached orbit a little less than nine minutes after liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Russian flight controllers reported the spacecraft’s solar arrays had deployed as scheduled and that all appeared normal. The Soyuz is scheduled to dock with the station March 31.

Vinogradov is a veteran of a 198-day mission aboard the Russian space station Mir, where he did five spacewalks. Williams, an Army colonel, flew on space shuttle Atlantis (STS-101) in 2000. He made one spacewalk during that flight to the station.

ESA ASTRONAUT SCHEDULED TO JOIN CREW IN JULY

Joining them during their stay on the station will be Thomas Reiter, a European Space Agency astronaut from Germany, also flying under a Roscosmos contract. He is scheduled to arrive at the station on Discovery's STS-121 mission, set for no earlier than July.

Discovery also will bring supplies, food, water, fuel and equipment, including a new umbilical cable system for the station’s Mobile transporter rail car, to replace an umbilical cable cut by an equipment malfunction.

Reiter will be the first non-Russian, non-U.S. long-duration crewmember on station. His presence will bring the station crew back to three for the first time since May 2003, in the wake of the space shuttle Columbia accident.

Expedition 12 crewmembers, Commander Bill McArthur and Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev, will give Vinogradov and Williams a safety briefing shortly after their arrival, and then begin extensive handover briefings.

Vinogradov and Williams also will be trained on the station's Canadarm2 and on systems and experiments on the station. The Canadarm2 is a robotic arm capable of handling large payloads and assisting in docking maneuvers. It is nearly 18 meters long and has seven motorized joints.

The two crews will spend about a week handing over operations, and Pontes will begin a series of research investigations.

McArthur, Tokarev and Pontes will return to Earth April 8. Expedition 12 crewmembers have been aboard the orbiting laboratory since October 2005.

During Expedition 13’s six months on the station, Vinogradov and Williams, and later Reiter, will conduct scientific experiments and station maintenance.

The crew will work with experiments across a wide variety of fields, including human life sciences, physical sciences and Earth observation, and education and technology demonstrations. Many experiments are designed to gather information about the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the human body to help with planning future exploration missions to the moon or Mars.

The crewmembers are scheduled to do two spacewalks: one by Williams and Reiter in U.S. spacesuits, the other by Vinogradov and Williams in Russian spacesuits.

ECLIPSE FROM THE SPACE STATION

Just hours before Expedition 13 left Baikonur Cosmodrome for the International Space Station, crewmembers McArthur and Tokarev took spectacular photographs from 370 kilometers above Earth of the circle of darkness created by the March 29 total eclipse of the sun.

The shadow of the moon moved in a northeasterly direction, beginning in Brazil and across the Atlantic, northern Africa, western China and Mongolia. At its longest duration, the shadow of the moon covered western Libya for just more than four minutes.

Astronaut Jeffrey Williams said the reaction to the eclipse on the day of the launch reminds "all of us who work in the space exploration program just what our purpose is, for discovery and exploration, and understanding the unknown."

He said such phenomena have inspired people throughout history to explore and discover, "to understand why things like that happen."

Many people in the path of the eclipse were excited about the event. Some likened it to the end of the world while others feared ill effects from the event. Some regarded it as a religious experience. Many, including some who had traveled great distances to see the eclipse, said it was a fascinating and exciting natural phenomenon.

However, Vinogradov did not share their excitement. "We just know that the moon was between the Earth and the sun," he said.

Additional information about the International Space Station and photographs of the eclipse taken from the station are available on the NASA Web site.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)