. SOYUZ TMA3

Flight Crew

FOALE, Colin Michael, 46, civilian, US ISS-8 commander and science officer, 6th mission

Previous missions: STS-45 (1992); STS-56 (1993); STS-63 (1995); STS 84/86 (1997); STS-103 (1999)

KALERI, Aleksandr Yuriyevich, 47, civilian, Russian ISS-8 Soyuz commander, 4th mission

Previous missions: Soyuz 14 (1992); Soyuz TM24 (1996); Soyuz TM30 (2000) DUQUE, Pedro Francisco, 40, civilian, EAS Soyuz TM3 flight engineer 1,

2nd mission

Previous mission: STS-95 (1998)

Flight Log

Despite being termed a “caretaker crew”, this residence would conduct a significant amount of science research with available hardware, routine maintenance and house­keeping, and an EVA. One of the reasons Foale did not continue the trend of regular email postings from ISS was that he was just too busy. It was planned to launch no fewer than three Progress re-supply vehicles during this residence to “stock up the station” in the absence of the Shuttle. However, funding difficulties (reminiscent of the latter days on Mir) meant that only one re-supply craft (M1-11) was actually launched. Careful management of onboard resources meant that the experienced crew, each with long-duration flights on Mir behind them, did not need to break into the new Progress supplies, although other equipment delivered was urgently needed. Significant maintenance was a priority with this crew, and with only two crewmembers they had a lot more work to do than would a crew of three.

Their flight to ISS was accompanied by Spanish ESA astronaut Pedro Duque. His Cervantes programme comprised 24 experiments requiring 40 hours of his 8 days aboard ISS. The experiments, conducted mainly in the Russian segment of the station,

ISS-8 crew Kaleri Foale and ESA astronaut Duque climb the steps to their Soyuz TMA3 spacecraft and a two-day flight to ISS. Duque would return with the ISS-7 crew a few days later but Kaleri and Foale were embarking on a six-month mission consisted of 12 investigations in life sciences, three in physical sciences and Earth observations, five under education, two under technology and two ground-based experiments. Most were sponsored by the Spanish government, although some were re-flights from the October 2002 Belgian Odessa mission. At the end of his week on ISS, Duque returned to Earth in the TMA2 spacecraft with the ISS-7 crew on 28 October.

In November, Foale and Kaleri practised emergency ingress procedures, with Kaleri wearing an Orlan EVA suit to determine if a suited crewman could enter the Soyuz using internal hatches. Kaleri was guided (and pushed) by Foale. The test took longer than planned and was deemed unsuccessful, so a second test, this time with both astronauts wearing suits, was attempted and successfully accomplished on 19 February. The two crew members completed their only EVA on 26 February (3 hours 56 minutes) using Orlan suits and exiting via the Pirs airlock. With both men outside, the ISS complex was left unattended for the first time since November 2000. The pair installed a protective ring around the Pirs entry hatch which was meant to prevent snagging on the way out of or back into the airlock. The ring was removed after the EVA. The two men also installed European and Japanese scientific packages on the Zvezda before the EVA was terminated early due to problems with Kaleri’s liquid cooling garment.

On 8 December, Mike Foale, who holds dual US and UK nationality, became the most experienced American astronaut, surpassing Carl Walz’s career total of 230 days 13 hours 3 minutes and 38 seconds in four missions. Foale was now on his sixth mission but Kaleri, on his fourth mission, was still 238 days ahead of his colleague in career experience! The crew returned to Earth on Soyuz TMA3 with Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers, who had arrived with the ISS-9 crew aboard Soyuz TMA4 at the end of April. Foale had by then logged over 374 days 11 hours in space, well ahead of all other American astronauts, but still far behind several cosmonauts, including Kaleri.

Milestones

240th manned space flight

96th Russian manned space flight

89th manned Soyuz mission

3rd manned Soyuz TMA mission

36th Russian and 90th flight with EVA operations

7th ISS Soyuz mission (6S)

2nd resident caretaker ISS crew (two-person)

Foale celebrates his 47th birthday in space (6 Jan)

Foale sets new career space flight record for an American astronaut at over 374 days