The public can relive six months in space Thursday with International Space Station Commander Bill McArthur, who landed last month after 190 days in orbit.
McArthur will discuss his mission in a 6:30 p.m. CDT presentation at Space Center Houston on Thursday, May 25. The event is free and will include slides, videos and a question-and-answer session in the Northrop Grumman Theater.
The doors will open at 6 p.m. CDT. Seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Once the 580-seat theater fills, guests will be seated in an adjacent area to watch the program on closed-circuit television.
McArthur, along with Russian cosmonaut and Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev, flew the Expedition 12 mission, launching Sept. 30, 2005, and landing April 8 in Kazakhstan. While in orbit, McArthur and Tokarev conducted two spacewalks and continued station maintenance and scientific experiments.
Along with celebrating the holidays and marking the fifth year of continuous human occupation of the station, the crew experienced several unique moments in orbit. They became the first spaceflight to link to a major concert, conversing with Paul McCartney as he played a wakeup song for them live from California. McArthur also showed support for the Houston Astros during the 2005 World Series, banning all "Sox" from the station for the duration.
During McArthur and Tokarev’s flight, other visitors to the station included spaceflight participants Gregory Olsen and Marcos Pontes. Olsen launched with Expedition 12 and then landed with Expedition 11 under a commercial contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency. Pontes, the first Brazilian astronaut, flew to the space station with the Expedition 13 crew and spent about eight days conducting experiments before returning to Earth with McArthur and Tokarev under a similar contract.
