New Space Station Crew Members Launch from Kazakhstan

HOUSTON -- NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and Russian cosmonauts Anton
Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin launched to the International Space
Station at 11:14 p.m. EST Sunday (10:14 a.m. Kazakhstan time, Monday)
from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Burbank, Shkaplerov and Ivanishin are scheduled to dock their Soyuz
TMA-22 spacecraft with their new home at 11:33 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 15,
and join Expedition 29 Commander Mike Fossum of NASA and Flight
Engineers Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov. Fossum will hand over command of
the station to the new crew within four days.

On Tuesday, coverage of the Soyuz docking will begin on NASA
Television at 11 p.m. NASA TV coverage of the hatches opening and the
welcoming ceremony aboard the orbiting laboratory will begin at 1:30
a.m. Wednesday.

Fossum, Furukawa and Volkov launched in June and are scheduled to
return to Earth in their Soyuz TMA-02M spacecraft at 8:24 p.m. Nov.
21 (8:24 a.m. Kazakhstan time on Nov. 22). Expedition 30 begins when
the current crew undocks, leaving Burbank in command. A formal change
of command ceremony is planned for Nov. 20 and will be aired on NASA
TV during a video file Nov. 21 at 8 a.m.

NASA astronaut Don Pettit, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and
European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers are scheduled to launch
to the station Dec. 21, when they will join Expedition 30 as flight engineers.

The six crew members will be busy with dozens of experiments during
their time aboard the station. They also will welcome a new era of
commercial resupply services from the United States. Expedition 30 is
expected to greet the arrival of Dragon, a commercial resupply ship
being built by SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif. Dragon will perform a test
flight and rendezvous with the station, soon followed by Cygnus
(scheduled for flight during Expedition 31), another commercial
resupply ship being built by Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va.

For NASA TV streaming video, schedule and downlink information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about the International Space Station and its
crew, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

To follow Twitter updates from Expedition 28-29 crew member Fossum, visit:

http://twitter.com/astro_aggie

To follow Twitter updates from Expedition 29-30 crew member Burbank, visit:

http://twitter.com/AstroCoastie

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