Latest André Kuipers Stories

HOUSTON, Dec. 21, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA Flight Engineer Don Pettit, Russian Soyuz Commander Oleg Kononenko and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Andre Kuipers of the Netherlands launched to the International Space Station aboard their Soyuz TMA-03M craft at 7:16 a.m. CST Wednesday, Dec. 21 (7:16 p.m. local time), from Kazakhstan. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Pettit, Kononenko and Kuipers are scheduled to dock to the Rassvet...

The crew aboard the International Space Station will be welcoming three new crew members just in time for the holidays. NASA said that Flight Engineer Don Pettit, Russian Soyuz Commander Oleg Kononenko and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Andre Kuipers are set to launch aboard a Soyuz spacecraft on Wednesday. The three-man crew will dock with the Rassvet module of the ISS on Friday, December 23. The space agency said that crew will join station Commander Dan Burbank of NASA and...

ESA astronaut André Kuipers is now officially ready for liftoff on 21 December: he and his crewmates have passed their final exams and left for the launch site Thursday. Along with André’s plane, his PromISSe mission blog also took off Thursday. Every crew destined for the International Space Station must endure two days of final exams in the simulators at Star City near Moscow before they are cleared for flight. And it is not a formality — they have to show they can control their...

Fresh off the arrival of three new crew members at the International Space Station, the next trio of residents is set to launch to the outpost Dec. 21. NASA Television will cover prelaunch activities, launch and docking to the orbital laboratory during the next several weeks. Expedition 30 NASA astronaut Don Pettit, Russian Soyuz Commander Oleg Kononenko and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Andre Kuipers are scheduled to launch at 7:16 a.m. CST on Dec. 21 (7:16 p.m. local time) from...

ESA’s next mission to the International Space Station will be launched on 21 December: André Kuipers will ride into orbit aboard the Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft as a member of the orbital outpost’s Expedition 30. Originally planned for late November, the launch was put on hold in August after the launch mishap of Russia’s Progress 44 unmanned freighter. With the successful ascent of Progress 45 on 30 October, a series of flight readiness meetings and the identification of the root...

  ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst has been assigned to fly to the International Space Station on a 6-month mission in 2014, serving as a flight engineer for Expeditions 40 and 41. Alexander is the second of the new group of European astronauts, which graduated last November, to be assigned to a mission. He will be launched aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in May 2014, returning to Earth in November 2014. Today is an ideal day for the...

  All the pieces are coming together for the next long mission by a European astronaut. Now it has a name and logo. ESA today revealed the name of André Kuipers' mission: PromISSe. ESA called on citizens of its member states last June to propose a name for André’s mission and received more than 200 proposals in just a month. Surprisingly, they also came from Slovenia, Australia, India, Mexico and Argentina. The judges weighed the eligible entries from a wide range of people,...

  ESA's next space-bound astronaut, André Kuipers, has spent most of the summer intensively training for his upcoming mission to the International Space Station.   André and crewmates Oleg Kononenko and Don Pettit have spent days in the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre (GCTC) in Star City, not far from Moscow in Russia, at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, and at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, USA. These photos tell the story of his summer time –...

Now that Paolo Nespoli has returned from the International Space Station, we are looking forward to Europe's next mission. André Kuipers will be launched to the orbital outpost in November "“ but his mission still has no name. Help us to find a good one!This will be André's second mission to the Space Station: he made an 11-day visit in 2004 as part of a crew rotation flight. But this time he will be staying for about six months, as a flight engineer on Expeditions 30 and 31. He will...

NASA and its international partners have assigned five new International Space Station crews and made changes to four previously assigned station crews.Among the newly announced crews for future station missions is the assignment of NASA astronauts Ron Garan, who was born in Yonkers, N.Y.; Mike Fossum, who grew up in McAllen, Texas; Dan Burbank, who considers Yarmouthport, Mass., his hometown; and Don Pettit, who was born in Silverton, Ore. European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers and...