HOUSTON — NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will hold two briefings Thursday, July 26, to preview the upcoming Expedition 33 and 34 missions aboard the International Space Station. NASA Television and the agency’s website will broadcast the briefings live.

At 11 a.m. CDT, the International Space Station Program and Science Overview briefing will cover mission priorities and objectives, which include hundreds of research experiments, a Russian spacewalk, international and commercial cargo deliveries to the complex and a commercial cargo demonstration flight.

The briefing participants include:

– Dan Harman, International Space Station manager, operations and integration

– Chris Edelen, Expedition 34 lead flight director

– Julie Robinson, International Space Station program scientist

At 1 p.m., Expedition 33/34 crew members Kevin Ford of NASA and Evgeny Tarelkin and Oleg Novitskiy of the Russian Federal Space Agency will discuss their mission. They are set to launch to the space station aboard the Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft Oct. 15 and return to Earth in March 2013.

Ford, Tarelkin and Novitskiy are three of the six crew members comprising Expeditions 33 and 34. When they arrive at the station, they will join NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.

Following the news conference, interview opportunities with the crew members are available in person, by phone or through Internet videoconferencing. To reserve an interview opportunity, news media representatives must contact the Johnson newsroom at 281-483-5111 by 5 p.m., Friday, July 20.

To participate in the news conferences from a NASA center, U.S. journalists must call that center’s public affairs office by 5 p.m. local time on Wednesday, July 25. To participate in the briefings by phone, media representatives must call the Johnson newsroom 15 minutes before each briefing. Priority will be given to journalists participating in person; questions by phone will be taken as time permits.

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