Oct 12 2008
From The Space Library
A Russian Soyuz rocket lifted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 07:01 (UT), ferrying an American space tourist and two Expedition 18 crew members to the ISS. Tourist Richard A. Garriott was the son of former astronaut Owen K. Garriott, who had been a crew member of Skylab 3 in 1973. Garriott had reached a commercial agreement with the Russian federal space agency Roscosmo to spend nine days aboard the ISS and to return to Earth with the Expedition 17 crew on 23 October 2008. The Expedition 18 crew, consisting of Commander E. Michael Fincke of NASA and Russian cosmonaut Yuri V. Lonchakov, would replace two members of the Expedition 17 crew, Russian cosmonauts Sergei A. Volkov and Oleg D. Kononenko. The third crew member, Russian cosmonaut Gregory E. Chamitoff, had arrived at the ISS in June 2008 and planned to stay until November 2008. The main goal of Expedition 17 was to prepare the ISS to accommodate six crew members on long-duration missions.
Spacewarn Bulletin, no. 660, 1 November 2008, http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/spacewarn/spx660.html (accessed 4 August 2011); NASA, “New Crew Blasts Off for International Space Station,” news release 08-257, 12 October 2008, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/oct/HQ_08-257_X18_Launch.html (accessed 8 August 2011).
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