ISS Astronaut TJ Creamer to Speak With Media March 21 About His ‘New Journey’ to the Marshall Center

What: A NASA astronaut becomes the first to train for a payload operations director position at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The payload operations director leads the team of flight controllers in NASA’s Payload Operations Center at the Marshall Center that coordinates all research activities aboard the orbiting laboratory. The astronaut will speak to media representatives on March 21 about his training experience.

Who: NASA astronaut TJ Creamer is training with the flight controllers in the Payload Operations Center two weeks every month since last September to gain his certification as a payload operations director. While it typically takes a year to become certified, his spaceflight experience will speed that up by a few months. Creamer traveled 65,200,000 miles around the planet while living more than five months aboard the International Space Station. He launched aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft Dec. 20, 2009, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and docked with the space station two days later. For the next 161 days, he served as a flight engineer and NASA science officer on Expeditions 22 and 23.

Creamer and his crew members supported three space shuttle missions that delivered the U.S. Tranquility module; installed the Cupola — a seven-window facility looking directly at the Earth, from which we are getting many of the spectacular views we are now seeing from the space station — onto Tranquility; put the finishing touches on U.S. laboratory research facilities; and attached the Russian Rassvet laboratory to the station. Creamer and the Expedition 23 crew returned to Earth aboard a Soyuz on June 1, 2010, landing in central Kazakhstan.

When: 4 p.m. CDT, March 21 – NASA astronaut TJ Creamer will be available to speak to the news media

Where: Payload Operations Center, Building 4663 NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

To attend: News media interested in attending the events should contact Kim Newton in Marshall’s Public & Employee Communications Office at 256-544-0034 no later than 4 p.m. CDT on Tuesday, March 20. Media must report to the Redstone Arsenal Joint Visitor Control Center at Gate 9, Interstate 565 interchange at Rideout Road/Research Park Boulevard. Vehicles are subject to a security search at the gate. News media will need two photo identifications and proof of car insurance. Visitor parking is available in front of Building 4200 on the southwest side.