NASA Television will provide extensive coverage of the Sept. 25 launch from Kazakhstan of three crew members of Expedition 41/42, as they begin their planned six-hour journey to the International Space Station. NASA Television coverage will start at 3:30 p.m. EDT and will include video of the pre-launch activities leading up to spacecraft boarding.
Barry “Butch” Wilmore of NASA and Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 4:25 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 25 (2:25 a.m. Friday, Sept. 26, in Baikonur).
Serova will become the fourth Russian woman to fly in space and the first Russian woman to live and work on the station.
Wilmore and Serova are flight engineers, and Samokutyaev commands the Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft, which will rendezvous with the space station and dock after four orbits of the Earth. Docking to the Poisk module of the Russian segment of the station will take place at 10:16 p.m. NASA TV coverage of docking will begin at 9:45 p.m.
Around 11:55 p.m., hatches between the Soyuz and the station will be opened. Expedition 41 Commander Max Suraev of Roscosmos, as well as Flight Engineers Reid Wiseman of NASA and Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency, will greet Wilmore, Samokutyaev and Serova. Hatch opening coverage begins on NASA TV at 11:30 p.m.
Wilmore, Samokutyaev and Serova will remain aboard the station until mid-March 2015. Suraev, Wiseman and Gerst, who have been aboard since May 29, will return to Earth in early November, leaving Wilmore as the commander of Expedition 42.
For the full schedule of pre-launch, launch and docking coverage, visit:
For b-roll and other media resources, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/stationnews
For more information about the International Space Station, visit:
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