The next three crewmembers scheduled to launch to the International Space Station will talk with reporters during a news conference at 3 p.m. EDT, Thursday, Aug. 14 at the Johnson Space Center (JSC), Houston. The news conference will be broadcast live on NASA Television with question-and-answer capability for reporters at participating NASA centers.
The crew includes the NASA astronaut and the Russian cosmonaut who will stay aboard the Station as members of Expedition 8: Expedition Commander and NASA/Station Science Officer Michael Foale and Soyuz Commander Alexander Kaleri. European Space Agency astronaut Pedro Duque of Spain is also traveling to the Space Station.
The crew begins training soon at JSC in preparation for their October 18 launch aboard the Russian Soyuz TMA-3 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Foale and Kaleri plan to spend about 200 days aboard the Space Station. Duque will spend eight days on the complex conducting a series of independent science investigations, through a contract between ESA and the Russian Aviation and Space Agency, Rosaviakosmos. Duque will return to Earth Oct. 28 with Expedition 7 crewmembers Yuri Malenchenko and Ed Lu, who have been aboard the Station since late April.
NASA Television is broadcast on AMC-9, transponder 9C, C-Band, located at 85 degrees west longitude. The frequency is 3880.0 MHz. Polarization is vertical and audio is monaural at 6.80 MHz.
For information about NASA TV on the Internet, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
Information about human space flight and the International Space Station is available on the Internet at:
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov