Mar 19 2012
From The Space Library
MEDIA ADVISORY: M12-044 COVERAGE SET FOR EUROPEAN CARGO DELIVERY TO SPACE STATION
HOUSTON -- NASA Television will broadcast live the flight of the European Space Agency's third Automated Transfer Vehicle cargo ship to the International Space Station. Coverage will begin with its launch on Thursday. The 13-ton "Edoardo Amaldi" spacecraft, named in honor of the 20th-century Italian physicist who is regarded as one of the fathers of European spaceflight, will carry 7.2 tons of propellant, water and supplies to the six crew members aboard the orbital laboratory. An Ariane 5 rocket that will place the cargo ship into orbit is scheduled to launch at 11:34 p.m. CDT on March 22 from the Arianespace launch site in Kourou, French Guiana. NASA TV's coverage of the launch will begin at 11 p.m. Like two predecessors that flew to the station in 2008 and 2011, the Edoardo Amaldi will conduct a slow, methodical trek to the complex under the guidance of engineers at the Automated Transfer Vehicle Control Center in Toulouse, France. It automatically will dock to the aft port of the Russian Zvezda service module at 5:34 p.m. on March 28. NASA TV coverage of the docking will begin at 4:45 p.m. Edoardo Amaldi is expected to remain at the outpost through early September, when it will undock and be commanded to deorbit and burn up upon reentry into Earth's atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.
MEDIA ADVISORY: M12-046 NASA INVITES QUESTIONS VIA TWITTER FOR SPACE STATION NEWS BRIEFINGS
HOUSTON -- For the first time, NASA will take questions from Twitter during news briefings about upcoming International Space Station missions on Tuesday, March 20, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. After reporters at the event ask questions, NASA will take as many questions as possible submitted on Twitter using the hashtag #askStation. Questions will be selected in advance and during the briefings. NASA Television and the agency's website will broadcast the events live. The briefings will preview the upcoming Expedition 32 and 33 space station missions. At 11 a.m. CDT, the space station program and science overview briefing will cover mission priorities and objectives. These include hundreds of research experiments, a Russian spacewalk, international and commercial cargo deliveries to the station and a commercial cargo demonstration flight. The briefing participants are: -- Michael Suffredini, International Space Station program manager -- Dina Contella, Expedition 32 lead flight director -- Tara Ruttley, associate International Space Station program scientist At 1 p.m., Expedition 32/33 crew members Sunita Williams of NASA, Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Yuri Malenchenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency will discuss their mission. They are set to launch to the orbiting outpost aboard the Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft July 15 and return to Earth in November. Williams, Hoshide and Malenchenko are three of the six crew members comprising Expeditions 32 and 33. When they arrive at the station, they will join NASA astronaut Joseph Acaba and Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin.
