Expedition 18 Crew Set To Launch To Station; Approaching 8 Years Of Continuous Human Presence In Orbit

The International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 18 crew is set to launch on Oct 12 via the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to replace the E17 crew currently aboard the ISS. On Nov 2, the E18 crew will commemorate 8 years of continuous human presence aboard the station, since first being occupied by Expedition 1 (Bill Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev) on Nov 2, 2000. E18 consists of: Commander Mike Fincke (TR) – veteran NASA astronaut who conducted 4 spacewalks during Expedition 9 in 2004; Flight Engineer Yuri Lonchakov (TL) – veteran Russia cosmonaut making his 3rd trip to the ISS; and rookie American Spaceflight Participant Richard Garriott (CR) – video game designer and son of former NASA astronaut Owen Garriott. Richard Garriott, known as 'Lord British' in the gaming world, will fly to the station with E18 under a commercial agreement with the Russia Space Agency and return to Earth on Oct 24 with the E17 crew of Sergei Volkov (BL) and Oleg Kononenko (BC). Garriott just missed being the 1st second-generation astronaut when Volkov (son of former Russia cosmonaut Alexander Volkov) launched to the ISS in April. The E18 crew is expected to dock with the ISS on Oct 14 to begin its 6-month mission. Current E17 crewmember Greg Chamitoff (BR) will remain aboard the station and join E18. Chamitoff is scheduled to be replaced by NASA astronaut Sandra Magnus aboard Endeavour STS-126 in November. (Credit: NASA)

On Monday Oct 6, NASA's MESSENGER (MErcury Surface Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging) spacecraft will conduct its second flyby of the innermost planet in our Solar System. From 04:00 to 06:00 EDT, reporters will be able to watch members of the Messenger operations and science team maneuver the spacecraft through the flyby at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL). Launched on Aug 3, 2004, the spacecraft is now half-way through its 7.9-billion-kilometer journey to Mercury orbit that includes more than 15 trips around the Sun. It has already flown past Earth twice, Venus twice, and Mercury once (Jan 14, 2008). One more pass of Mercury will be conducted in Sep 2009 to slow the spacecraft sufficiently to become the first ever to be inserted into Mercury's orbit in Mar 2011. Messenger (BL) is loaded with 7 advanced scientific instruments including a dual imaging system and a laser altimeter to create a topographic map, 3 spectrometers to study the elemental composition of the planet's rocks and minerals, and 2 instruments to resolve questions about Mercury's magnetic field. This week's flyby will take the craft 200 km above the Solar System's smallest planet, where it will take over 1,200 high-resolution and color images of the surface, including 30% that has never been seen by spacecraft. Messenger is the 7th in NASA's Discovery Program of low-cost, scientifically focused space missions. Sean Solomon (BR) of the Carnegie Institute in Washington DC leads the mission as principal investigator, and JHUAPL built and operates Messenger. (Credit: NASA, JHUAPL)