Expedition 28 Launch

New Crew Members Prepare for Launch 


Expedition 28 Flight Engineers Mike Fossum, Sergei Volkov and Satoshi Furukawa are scheduled to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:12 p.m. EDT Tuesday (2:12 a.m. Wednesday, Baikonur time) aboard the Soyuz TMA-02M spacecraft. They will arrive at the station Thursday to join the Expedition 28 crew. NASAtv will carry the launch live. Coverage begins Tuesday at 3:30 pm EDT. 

World Science Festival Video : Astronaut Diary: Life in Space

World Science Festival Video : Astronaut Diary: Life in Space

A panel of astronauts shared their experiences of working and living in space at World Science Festival 2010.

77min video

Exp 28 Mission Summary.pub

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/545617main_exp28_mission_summary.pdf

Touchdown! Endeavour has returned to Earth!

Main gear touched down at 2:34:51 amET. Nose gear touchdown came at 2:35:04 & wheels stop came at 2:35:36. Welcome home Mark Kelly, Greg Johnson (Box), Greg Chamitoff (Taz), Mike Finke (Spanky), Drew Feustel, and Roberto Vittori (Ricky Bobby).

Over a total of 25 missions, Endeavour has logged 299 days in space and 122,883,151 miles traveled. Endeavour landed for the final time after 248 orbits around Earth and a journey of 6,510,221 miles.

Mike Finke now holds the US record for space time at 382 days!

Watch a clip of the landing from NASA's YouTube Channel.

Landing and Rollout

It's a busy day at NASA today. Space Shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to land at KSC at 2:35 am EDT Wednesday morning. The crew will wake up at 5:56 p.m. to make final preparations for landing, including closing the payload bay doors at 10:49 p.m. and a de-orbit burn at 1:29 a.m. At the same time, ground crews will be busy with the Rollout of Space Shuttle Atlantis. Atlantis will leave the VAB at 8:00 p.m. on the crawler at and head to launch pad 39A. NPR did an interesting profile on the "Crawler Crew."

ISS/Endeavour Flyover

The streak of light was made by the Space Station and Shuttle.

This is a ten second exposure.

As the crews prepare to close the hatches later this morning, the Space Station and Shuttle Endeavour flew over New York and New Jersey. At about 4:25 am, a bright white light appeared on the south-western horizon. Over the several minutes, it transited across the sky nearly directly overhead. As they moved to the north-east, the light dimmed and turned yellow as they moved toward the rising sun. It was absolutely beautiful, and so worth waking up at 3:45 am to see it.

STS-134 Day 3: Back-Flip, Docking, ELC Mounting

Endeavour docked at 6:14 am EDT Wednesday morning over the west coast of Chile. Prior to docking, CMDR Mark Kelly and Pilot Greg (Box) Johnson performed the "back flip" maneuver to allow high resolution photographs to be taken of the heat shield tiles from the space station. These photos are analyzed by ground crews to see if there was any damage to the tiles during flight.

Endeavour approaches ISS for docking.

Endeavour CMDR Mark Kelly and ISS CMDR Dima Kondraryev after the hatches were opened.

The STS-134 crew was welcomed by the ISS Expedition 27 crew and then given safety briefings before getting to work. The first order of business was for Greg (Taz) Chamitoff and Mike (Spanky) Fink to unload the first major payload - the express logistics carrier (ELC). This is a pallet of spare parts, supplies, and equipment that will help to keep the ISS operational even after the Shuttle Program comes to an end later this summer. The ELC is essentially a fully stocked tool shed. The ELC was removed by Endeavour's robotic arm, handed off to the ISS robotic arm and moved by ISS arm to the starboard (right) truss. The trusses are the arms that extend left and right of the main habitation and lab modules. The trusses have the solar arrays mounted to them.