WASHINGTON, March 14, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Three crew members
have arrived safely at the International Space Station, following a
successful launch and docking of their Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft
Thursday.
The Soyuz spacecraft carrying Nick
Hague and Christina Koch of
NASA and Alexey Ovchinin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos
launched at 3:14 p.m. EDT
(12:14 a.m. Friday Baikonur time)
from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Hague, Koch and Ovchinin docked to
the space station's Rassvet module at 9:01
p.m. after a four-orbit, six-hour journey, and are scheduled
to open the hatch and be welcomed aboard the orbiting laboratory at
approximately 11:10 p.m. Their
mission, Expedition 59, officially began at the time of
docking.
The arrival of Hague, Koch and Ovchinin restores the station's
crew complement to six. They have joined Anne McClain of NASA, David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency
and Expedition 59 Commander Oleg
Kononenko of Roscosmos.
The crew members will spend more than six months conducting
about 250 science investigations in fields such as biology, Earth
science, human research, physical sciences, and technology
development. Seventy-five of the investigations are new and have
never been performed in space. Some of the investigations are
sponsored by the U.S. National Laboratory on the space
station, which Congress designated in 2005 to maximize its use for
improving quality of life on Earth.
Highlights of upcoming investigations include devices that mimic
the structure and function of human organs, free-flying robots, and
an instrument to measure Earth's distribution of carbon
dioxide.
Three resupply spacecraft - a Russian Progress, Northrop Grumman
Cygnus and SpaceX Dragon - are scheduled to arrive with science to
support those investigations and additional supplies for the
crew.
Hague, Koch, McClain and Saint Jacques soon will begin final
preparations to venture outside the station's Quest airlock for
three planned spacewalks. On March 22
and 29, pairs of spacewalkers will replace nickel-hydrogen
batteries with newer, more powerful lithium-ion batteries for power
channels on one pair of the station's solar arrays. On April 8, spacewalkers will lay out jumper cables
between the Unity module and the midpoint of the station's backbone
to establish a redundant power path to the Canadian-built robotic
arm, known as Canadarm2, and enhance computer network capabilities.
The March 29 spacewalk with McClain
and Koch is scheduled to be the first-ever spacewalk with
all-female spacewalkers. As with all spacewalks, crew member
assignments are subject to change due to real-time operations.
The crew also is scheduled to be onboard during test flights of
NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which will return human spaceflight
launches for space station missions to U.S. soil.
McClain, Saint-Jacques and Kononenko are scheduled to remain
aboard the station until June, while Hague, Koch and Ovchinin are
set to return to Earth early this fall.
Hague and Ovchinin now have completed a journey to the station
that initially was planned for Oct.
11, when a booster separation problem with their Soyuz
rocket's first stage triggered an abort two minutes after launch,
resulting in a safe return to Earth. They were reassigned to fly
again after McClain, Kononenko and Saint-Jacques launched for
Expedition 58 in early December. This is Ovchinin's third flight
into space, the second for Hague and the first for Koch. NASA
selected all three astronauts in the Expedition 59 crew in the 2013
astronaut class.
For more than 18 years, humans have lived and worked
continuously aboard the 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, including the Moon and Mars. A global
endeavor, 236 people from 18 countries have visited the unique
microgravity laboratory that has hosted more than 2,500
investigations from researchers in 106 countries. Investigations
conducted on the International Space Station impact the daily lives
of people on Earth and prepare the way for humans to venture
farther into space.
Follow Koch, Hague and McClain on their space mission at:
https://twitter.com/Astro_Christina
https://twitter.com/AstroHague
https://twitter.com/AstroAnnimal
Get breaking news, images and features from the
space station on social media at:
https://instagram.com/iss
and
https://www.twitter.com/Space_Station
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SOURCE NASA