NASA astronaut Kate Rubins will be available for live satellite interviews from Moscow on Wednesday, June 1, before her launch to the International Space Station. She will answer questions about her upcoming mission aboard the world’s only orbiting laboratory from 9-10 a.m. EDT, airing live on NASA Television and streaming on the agency’s website.
Rubins, who was born in Farmington, Connecticut, and raised in Napa, California, is in Moscow for final preparations prior to her launch on June 24. The interviews will be preceded at 8:30 a.m. by 30 minutes of video clips highlighting her training.
To schedule an interview, media must contact Thomas Gerczak at 281-792-7515 or thomas.j.gerczak@nasa.gov no later than 4 p.m. on Friday, May 27. Media participating in the live shots must tune to NTV-3. Satellite tuning information is available at:
Rubins will launch to the space station aboard a Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, along with her Expedition 48/49 crewmates, cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and astronaut Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
Rubins was selected as an astronaut in 2009, and this will be her first spaceflight.
During her time at the space station, Rubins will participate in several science experiments. Along with physical science, Earth and space science and technology development work, she will conduct biological and human research investigations. Research into sequencing the first genome in microgravity and how the human body’s bone mass and cardiovascular systems are changed by living in space are just two examples of the many experiments in which Rubins may take part.
Rubins received a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology from the University of California, San Diego, and a doctorate in cancer biology from Stanford University. Before joining the astronaut corps in 2009, she worked with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where she helped develop the first model of smallpox infection. She also headed a laboratory of 14 researchers studying viral diseases that affect Central and West Africa. As part of that work, she researched the gene expression responses of diseases, such as monkeypox and Ebola.
After arriving at the station on June 26, Rubins, Ivanishin and Onishi will join Expedition 48 NASA astronaut Jeff Williams, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka. They are expected to be at the station for the delivery of the station’s first international docking adapter, which will accommodate the future arrival of U.S. commercial crew spacecraft. A Japanese cargo craft also is planned to launch to the station carrying lithium ion batteries to replace the nickel-hydrogen batteries currently used on the station to store electrical energy generated by the station’s solar arrays.
Rubins is scheduled to return to Earth with Ivanishin and Onishi in October.
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