HOUSTON – TECH – NASA Television will provide extensive coverage of the Sunday, Nov. 23, launch from Kazakhstan of three crew members of Expedition 42/43, as they begin their planned six-hour journey to the International Space Station. NASA TV coverage will start at 3 p.m. EST and will include video of the pre-launch activities leading up to spacecraft boarding.
Terry Virts of NASA, Anton Shkaplerov of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:01 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 23 (3:01 a.m. Monday, Nov. 24 in Baikonur).
The trio will ride to orbit in a Soyuz spacecraft, which will rendezvous with the space station and dock after four orbits of Earth. Docking to the Russian segment’s Rassvet module will take place at 9:53 p.m. NASA TV coverage of docking will begin at 9:15 p.m.
Around 11:30 p.m., hatches between the Soyuz and the station will be opened. Expedition 42 Commander Barry Wilmore of NASA, as well as Flight Engineers Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova of Roscosmos, will greet Virts, Shkaplerov and Cristoforetti. Hatch opening coverage begins on NASA TV at 11 p.m.
Virts, Shkaplerov and Cristoforetti will remain aboard the station until mid-May 2015. Wilmore, Samokutyaev and Serova, who have been aboard since Sept. 25, will return to Earth in early March, leaving Virts in command of Expedition 43.
