NASA Television will provide live coverage of events surrounding three International Space Station crew members who are scheduled to end four months on the orbiting laboratory with a landing in Kazakhstan Sept. 16.
Expedition 32 Flight Engineer Joe Acaba of NASA and Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Sergei Revin of the Russian Federal Space Agency will undock their Soyuz TMA-04M spacecraft from the space station at 7:11 p.m., EDT, heading for a landing at 10:53 p.m. north of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan. Their return will wrap up 125 days in space since their launch from Kazakhstan on May 15, including 123 days on the station.
At the time of undocking, Expedition 33 formally will begin aboard the station under the command of NASA’s Sunita Williams. She and her crewmates, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, will tend to the station as a three-person crew for a month until the arrival of three new crew members in mid-October, including NASA astronaut Kevin Ford.
NASA Television coverage on Sept. 16 and 17 of the Expedition 32 landing and post-landing activities will include:
Sept. 16:
3:30 p.m. – Farewells and hatch closure (hatch closure at 3:55 p.m.).
6:45 p.m. – Undocking and departure (undocking at 7:09 p.m.).
9:30 p.m. – Deorbit burn and landing (deorbit burn at 9:56 p.m.; landing at 10:53 p.m.).
Sept. 17:
10:30 a.m. – Video File of landing and post-landing activities
For NASA TV downlink information, schedules and links to streaming video, visit http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.
