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Soyuz TMA-15 Launches Next Week

The ISS will get a six-member crew

May 22, 2009 10:18 GMT  ·  By
One of the latest pictures of the ISS, taken by space shuttle Discovery astronauts earlier this year
   One of the latest pictures of the ISS, taken by space shuttle Discovery astronauts earlier this year

The moment of reckoning is finally at hand, ISS engineers from around the world think at this point. After more than ten years of operating the International Space Station with just a three-astronaut crew, the facility is now finally able to host a permanent crew of six starting next week. Scheduled to lift off from Kazakhstan on May 27th, the Soyuz TMA-15 space capsule will deliver three more astronauts to the orbital laboratory, which will join the Expedition 19 crew already in space, to form the complete, six-astronaut team of Expedition 20.

The new capsule will take to space Commander Roman Romanenko, from the Russian space agency RosCosmos, European Space Agency (ESA) Flight Engineer 1 Frank De Winne, from Belgium, and Flight Engineer 2 Robert Thirsk, of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). In the 102nd spaceflight to be performed by a Soyuz capsule, the three astronauts will take off to their destination at 6:34 am EDT (1034 GMT), from the world's busiest spaceport, the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Located in the Kazakh steppe, the facility is built on ground under lease to Russia until 2050.

Soyuz is expected to reach the ISS on May 29th, after about two days of chasing the facility through space. The docking procedure is scheduled to begin at 8:36 am EDT (1236 GMT), and the American space agency has already announced that it will cover the launch live, on NASA TV, starting at 5:45 am (0945 GMT), on May 27th. With the new flight, all five space agencies involved in the ISS (NASA, ESA, JAXA, RosCosmos and CSA) will be represented aboard the station, for the first time ever. Expedition 20 will be led in orbit by Russian Astronaut Gennedy Padalka, who currently commands Expedition 19.

Currently, astronauts in orbit are working hard on getting the space station ready for the upcoming visits. After Soyuz TMA 15, the shuttle Endeavor will also dock on the facility. During the June visit to the ISS, the space shuttle Endeavor, which is currently still docked at Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center, as part of the STS-400 mission to aid Atlantis, will carry Wakata's replacement, NASA Flight Engineer Timothy Kopra, to the orbital station. After that time, the crew will be composed of two Russians, two Americans, a Canadian and a European.