. SOYUZ TMA9

Flight Crew

LOPEZ-ALEGRIA, Michael Eladio, 48, USN, ISS-14 commander and science officer, 4th mission

Previous missions: STS-73 (1995); STS-92 (2000); STS-113 (2002)

TYURIN, Mikhail Vladislavovich, 46, civilian, Russian ISS-14 Soyuz commander, 2nd mission Previous mission: ISS-3 (2001)

ANSARI, Anousheh, 40, civilian, US space flight participant

Flight Log

The original spaceflight participant on this mission was scheduled to be Japanese businessman Daisuke Enomato, but on 21 August he failed the pre-flight medical and was replaced by his back-up Anousheh Ansari. She is the Iranian-born naturalised American who co-founded Telecom Technologies Inc. in 1993, and the X-Prize sub­orbital space flight record attempts (won in 2005 by Spaceship One). During the flight to ISS, she reportedly suffered from Spaceflight Adaptation Syndrome, but seemed to recover successfully once on ISS to complete her research programme. This consisted of three TV broadcasts, amateur radio broadcasts, photo and video surveys of the Russian segment of ISS for education purposes, participation in two small ESA experiments and commemorative activities, including regular email contact to the Internet through her own website during the mission. She returned to Earth on 29 September with the ISS-13 crew in TMA8.

Soyuz TMA9 docked with ISS on 21 September to begin the six-month residency of the ISS-14 crew. During their stay, they will work with German ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter until he is replaced by NASA astronaut Sunita Williams during the STS-116 mission in December. Williams, like Reiter, will serve as ISS-14 flight

engineer 2 and will continue to work with the ISS-15 crew until she in turn is replaced by another NASA astronaut during STS-118 in the spring of 2007.

The residency of ISS-14 will see a significant increase in onboard science activities with the return of a resident three-person crew. In addition, they will host Shuttle missions STS-116 and 117, receive two Progress re-supply missions and complete four EVAs. One of the spacewalks will be by Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria using the Pirs airlock and wearing Orlan suits. The other three will be by Lopez-Alegria and Williams out of the Quest airlock wearing US suits. The ISS-14 crew are expected to be relieved by the ISS-15 crew in March 2007, and will return to Earth with the next space flight participant (launched with the ISS-15 crew on TMA10) on 19 March 2007.

Milestones

250th manned space flight 102nd Russian manned space flight 95th manned Soyuz mission 9th manned Soyuz TMA mission 11th ISS Soyuz mission (11S)

11th visiting mission (VC-11)

4th space flight participant 1st female space flight participant