Expedition 32 Supplement Heads to Station

Expedition 32 crew members at the hatchway of their Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft July 10, 2012 following a final check of the vehicle (Credits: NASA/Victor Zelentsov).

On July 15, the remaining three crewmembers of International Space Station Expedition 32 took off aboard Soyuz TMA-05M from Baikonur Cosmodrome. The three will join Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineers Joe Acaba and Sergei Revin aboard ISS on July 17.

The ISS crew has been reduced to three since the end of Expedition 31 which brought Commander Oleg Kononenko and Flight Engineers Don Pettit and Andre Kuipers Don Pettit back to Earth on July 1.

The new Expedition 32 crew consists of Suni Williams, Yuri Malenchenko who commands the launch Soyuz, and Akihiko Hoshide.

Suni Williams was an aviator in the US Navy before joining NASA in 1998. She was a flight engineer aboard ISS  Expedition 14 and broke records for female EVA time and flight time. Williams will be Expedition 33 commander, after Padalka, Acaba, and Revin return to Earth.

Yuri Malenchenko is a Ukranian cosmonaut who completed his first spaceflight in 1994 with a 126 day stay on the Mir-16 station. He flew on the space shuttle then too ka break from spaceflight to serve a sa test pilot and instructor. His next flight was in 2007 when he last served as flight engineer aboard ISS.

Akihiko Hoshide is a JAXA astronaut who first flew to space on the space shuttle STS-124 mission in 2008. During that mission, he installed the Kibo module which he also helped develop.

The timing of the launch corresponds with the 37th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. The first docking of a US spacecraft with a Russian spacecraft under the project took place when an Apollo and Soyuz 7K-TM both launched from their respective sites on July 15, 1975, docking two days later.

The new crew can look forward to a busy mission, with a Japanese HTV cargo vessel docking, a potential visit from SpaceX Dragon or even the second commercial vehicle aiming to rendezvous with ISS, Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Cynus, and a possible spacewalk – or even two – in the works. Expedition 32 has been shortened to 4 months instead of the usual 6 due to delays with the launch of the prior expedition. Although the crew are naturally disappointed at the lost space time, they are anticipating a very busy schedule in the coming months.

Below, a video of the July 15 preparations and launch: