New Station Crew Launches on Soyuz; Briefing From Space on June 1

HOUSTON, May 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The International Space Station
crew is awaiting the arrival of three new members that will usher in an era of
six-person crews aboard the orbiting laboratory. Russian cosmonaut Roman
Romanenko, European Space Agency astronaut Frank De Winne and Canadian Space
Agency astronaut Bob Thirsk launched aboard a Soyuz spacecraft Wednesday
morning from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO)

The Soyuz is scheduled to dock with the station at 8:36 a.m. Friday, May 29.
The trio will join station Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineers Mike
Barratt of NASA and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
(JAXA) to form the Expedition 20 crew. It will mark the first time all five
partner agencies are represented by astronauts on the station at the same
time.

The expanded crew of the International Space Station will discuss the start of
six-person operations in a news conference at 9:25 a.m. Monday, June 1. The
news conference will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the
NASA Web site.

Reporters at NASA centers and locations hosted by JAXA, ESA and CSA will be
able to ask questions during the 30-minute news conference. A separate news
conference is scheduled for the crew with Russian news media, but will not be
broadcast on NASA TV due to time constraints. Journalists who want to
participate must call the public affairs office at their preferred location by
10 a.m. Friday.

For NASA TV downlink, schedule and streaming video information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about the space station and its crew members, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

SOURCE NASA

Katherine Trinidad, Headquarters, Washington, +1-202-358-1100,
katherine.trinidad@nasa.gov; or Kelly Humphries, Johnson Space Center,
Houston, +1-281-483-5111, kelly.o.humphries@nasa.gov, both of NASA