WASHINGTON — NASA Television will provide live coverage May 12-14 as three crew members aboard the International Space Station end five months in orbit and return to Earth for a scheduled landing May 13.
Expedition 35 Commander Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency, Tom Marshburn of NASA and Roman Romanenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) will undock their Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft from the station at 7:08 p.m. EDT May 13, heading for a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan southeast of Dzhezkazgan at 10:31 p.m. (8:31 a.m. Kazakh time, May 14). They will have spent 146 days in space since their Dec. 19 launch from Kazakhstan.
Undocking will mark the official start of Expedition 36 under the command of Pavel Vinogradov of Roscosmos. Vinogradov and his crewmates, Chris Cassidy of NASA and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, will tend to the station as a three-person crew for two weeks until the arrival of three new crew members, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency.
NASA TV coverage will begin Sunday, May 12, with the change of command ceremony between Hadfield and Vinogradov. Coverage will continue May 13 and 14 with Expedition 35 landing and post-landing activities.
NASA TV’s full coverage schedule is as follows (all times EDT):
Sunday, May 12:
3:40 p.m. — Expedition 35/36 change of command ceremony
Monday, May 13:
3:30 p.m. — Farewells and hatch closure (hatch closure scheduled at 3:50 p.m.)
6:45 p.m. — Undocking (undocking scheduled at 7:08 p.m.)
9:15 p.m. — Deorbit burn and landing (deorbit burn scheduled at 9:37 p.m., landing scheduled at 10:31 p.m.)
Midnight –Video file of hatch closure, undocking and landing activities
Tuesday, May 14:
Noon — Video file of post-landing activities and interviews
For NASA TV schedule and video streaming information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv
For information on the International Space Station or the Expedition 35 crew, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station
