NASA Astronaut Reid Wiseman Available for Interviews before Space Station Mission

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman of Baltimore, Md., who is making final preparations for a May launch to the International Space Station, will be available for live satellite interviews from 6 to 7 a.m. EDT Friday, May 9.

Wiseman will participate live from the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia. The interviews will be preceded at 5:30 a.m. by a video b-roll feed of his mission training highlights. To participate, reporters should contact Karen Svetaka at 281-483-8684 or karen.a.svetaka@nasa.gov no later than 3 p.m., Thursday, May 8.

Wiseman is a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Md. As a naval aviator, Wiseman flew the FA-18F Super Hornet and served in numerous assignments around the world before his selection to NASA’s astronaut corps in 2009

Wiseman, Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency and Maxim Suraev of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) will launch to the space station aboard a Soyuz spacecraft May 28 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. They are scheduled to return to Earth in November.

Wiseman, Gerst and Suraev will join NASA astronaut Steve Swanson and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev, who launched to the station in March. The six-person crew will participate in several hundred experiments in biology and biotechnology, physical science and Earth science during its nearly six-month-long space mission.

The International Space Station is NASA’s springboard to the exploration of deep space and Mars. NASA uses the space station as a test bed to demonstrate new technologies and make research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The orbiting laboratory also advances our understanding of how the body changes in space over time and how to protect astronaut health for longer duration missions.

For information about the International Space Station, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

Participating media in the live shots will find satellite tuning information at:

http://go.nasa.gov/1pOWUhR

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

http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

For Wiseman’s biography, visit:

http://go.nasa.gov/1cRNLtH

The crew members will share their experiences aboard the space station on Instagram and Twitter:

http://instagram.com/iss

http://twitter.com/astro_reid

http://twitter.com/Astro_Alex