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Expedition 8 Crew Set for Space Station Launch

Posted on: Friday, 17 October 2003, 06:00 CDT

NASA -- The Expedition 8 crew, the next to inhabit the International Space Station, is slated to launch to the orbital outpost on October 18, 2003, aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Commander and NASA Station Science Officer Michael Foale and Flight Engineer Alexander Kaleri will relieve the Expedition 7 crew, Commander Yuri Malenchenko and NASA Station Science Officer Ed Lu.

Foale and Kaleri are scheduled to spend about six months aboard the orbital outpost maintaining Station operations and continuing science investigation.

Astronaut Michael Foale will command the expedition 8 crew of the International Space Station. Foale was born in Louth, England, but considers Cambridge, England, to be his hometown.

He moved to the United States to pursue a career in the U.S. space program. He joined NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston in 1983. Four years later, NASA selected him for the astronaut corps.

"When we look back fifty years to this time, we won't remember the experiments that were performed, we won't remember the assembly that was done, we may barely remember...any individuals. What we will know was that countries came together to do the first joint international project, and we will know that that was the seed that started us off to the moon and Mars," observed Foale.

Foale is a veteran of long-duration spaceflight aboard the Russian space station Mir, as well as multiple Space Shuttle missions.

In 1997, Foale helped re-establish the Mir spacecraft following a collision with the Russian Progress resupply vehicle causing the station's Spektr module to depressurize.

To inspect the damage to the module's exterior, Foale conducted a "spacewalk" with crewmate cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyev. Foale lived and worked on Mir 145 days. In total, Foale logged over 178 days in orbit.

Cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri, the Soyuz commander and Space Station flight engineer for Expedition 8, is also a veteran of long-duration spaceflight as a resident aboard Mir with 416 days in space to his credit.

He has flown international missions with German and French cosmonauts, as well as American astronauts Shannon Lucid, John Blaha and Jerry Linenger. He was born in Yurmala, Latvia and studied in Moscow.

"The International Space Station is a very good step forward, and it's a very good experience for us that can show us how to work together in the future. If we put this task in front of ourselves and learn how to operate very difficult scientific projects, we'll be able to reach much more in the future. We can go together on Mars, we can go to other planets. At least I would like to believe that," says Kaleri.

The Expedition 8 crewmembers will travel to the Station aboard the Soyuz TMA-3 spacecraft. They will be joined by European Space Agency Astronaut Pedro Duque, who will fly as part of a contract between the European Space Agency and Rosaviakosmos, the Russian Aviation and Space Agency.

Expedition 8 crew Alexander Kaleri and Michael Foale. Credit: NASA

A Soyuz space capsule attached to the International Space Station. Credit: NASA

Artist's rendition of Canadarm2. Credit: NASA

Duque is making his second trip into space, having flown aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1998. His mission to Station will span 10 days. He will return to Earth with the Expedition 7 crew on the Soyuz TMA-2.

Expedition 8 is slated to dock with the Station on October 20. The joint crews will perform a week of joint operations and handover activities before Duque and the Expedition 7 depart Station and return to Earth on Oct. 27.

Once the Expedition 7 crew undocks, the Expedition 8 crew will settle down to work. Station operations and maintenance will take up a considerable share of time for the two-person crew.

During more than six months aloft, Foale and Kaleri will monitor the arrival of three Russian Progress resupply cargo ships filled with food, fuel, water, new research experiments and supplies. They will upgrade the software in the on-board Station computers and conduct more than four dozen U.S. and Russian experiments.

The crew will work with the Station's robotic arm, Canadarm2, to observe Station's exterior and check out the robotic system's performance in orbit.

The Expedition 8 launch from Russia will be covered live on NASA Television and can be seen on the Internet at:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

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On the Net:

NASA

Image Gallery of the Expedition 8 Crew

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