Sep. 07, 2011

MEDIA ADVISORY: M11-188

NASA TV WILL BROADCAST SOYUZ LANDING ON SEPT. 15

HOUSTON -- NASA Television will broadcast the return to Earth of three crew members who have called the International Space Station (ISS) home for more than five months.

On Sept. 15, Expedition 28 Soyuz Commander Alexander Samokutyaev, NASA Flight Engineer Ron Garan and off-going station Commander Andrey Borisenko will undock from the station's Poisk module to return to Earth in their Soyuz TMA-21 spacecraft.

They are set to land on the southern region steppe of Kazakhstan near the town of Dzhezkazgan at 11:01 p.m. CDT on Sept. 15 (10:01 a.m. local time, Sept. 16). Their return was delayed a week due to the Aug. 24 loss of the unmanned ISS Progress 44 cargo craft.

Expedition 29 station Commander Mike Fossum of NASA, Russian Flight Engineer Sergei Volkov and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Flight Engineer Satoshi Furukawa will remain aboard the complex to conduct research until their planned return to Earth in mid-November.

The schedule to launch three new Expedition 29 crew members, NASA Flight Engineer Dan Burbank, Soyuz Commander Anton Shkaplerov and Russian Flight Engineer Anatoly Ivanishin, is under review as NASA and its international partners assess the readiness to resume Soyuz launches.

The full schedule of the Expedition 28 Soyuz TMA-21 hatch closure, undocking and landing coverage is below. All times are CDT.

Wednesday, Sept. 14 4:40 p.m. - Expedition 28-29 change of command ceremony (Borisenko hands over station command to Fossum) Thursday, Sept. 15 4 p.m. -¬ Soyuz TMA-21 crew farewells and hatch closure (hatch closure scheduled at 4:35 p.m.) 7:15 p.m. - Undocking coverage (undocking scheduled at 7:37 p.m.) 9:30 p.m. - Deorbit burn and landing coverage (Deorbit burn scheduled at 10:06 p.m., landing in Kazakhstan scheduled at 11:01 p.m.) Friday, Sept. 16 2 a.m. - Video File of the landing and post-landing activities (repeated at 4 a.m. and 6 a.m.) 11 a.m. - Video File of the landing and post-landing activities that includes post-landing interview with Garan and the cosmonauts' return to Chkalovsky Airfield near Star City, Russia

For NASA TV downlink, schedule and streaming video information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about the International Space Station and its crew, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

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Clint Bradford clintbradford@mac.com