Jul 5 2012

From The Space Library

MEDIA ADVISORY: M12-124 EXPEDITION 30 AND 31 ASTRONAUT DON PETTIT AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEWS

HOUSTON -- Just back from his mission aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Don Pettit will be available for live satellite interviews from 6 to 7 a.m. CDT, Thursday, July 12. Pettit and his crew mates, Expedition 31 Flight Engineer Andre Kuipers of the European Space Agency and Commander Oleg Kononenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency, returned to Earth in their Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft July 1. Pettit completed 193 days in space as a member of the Expedition 30 and 31 crews during his third space flight. Together with his previous space station expedition and space shuttle flights, Pettit is fourth among U.S. space fliers with 370 days in space. He also has two spacewalks to his credit. Pettit and his space station crew members spent the majority of their time aboard the orbiting laboratory performing science experiments. Their efforts supported more than 200 scientific investigations involving more than 400 researchers around the world. The studies ranged from integrated investigations of the human cardiovascular and immune systems to fluid, flame and robotic research. They also welcomed the first commercial cargo vehicle to the station, the SpaceX Dragon, which Pettit caught and berthed to the complex using the station's robotic arm. During Expedition 30 and 31, Pettit also used household objects aboard the station to perform a variety of unusual physics experiments for the video series "Science Off the Sphere." Through these demonstrations, Pettit showed more than a million Internet viewers how space affects scientific principles. Pettit is a native of Silverton, Ore., and a 1978 graduate of Oregon State University. He earned a doctorate in 1983 from Arizona State University and worked as a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory before being selected by NASA as an astronaut in 1996.