NASA announces new ISS crew

NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency have named two astronauts and two cosmonauts to the next International Space Station crew, known as expedition 15, the U.S. space agency announced on Wednesday.

Astronauts Clayton C. Anderson and Daniel M. Tani will travel to the station next year and work as flight engineers. Cosmonauts Fyodor N. Yurchikhin and Dr. Oleg V. Kotov will spend six months aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Anderson will get a ride to the station aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour's STS-118 mission, targeted for launch in June 2007. He will return to Earth on shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-120. That flight will carry his replacement, Tani, to the station. Tani will return on shuttle mission STS-122, targeted for October 2007.

Yurchikhin will command Expedition 15, and Kotov will serve as station flight engineer and Soyuz commander. Yurchikhin and Kotov will fly to the complex aboard a Soyuz spacecraft scheduled to launch in March 2007. Until Anderson arrives, astronaut Sunita L. Williams will serve as Expedition 15's third crew member and flight engineer. She will fly to the station on STS-116 in this December.

The Expedition 15 backup crew is astronaut Gregory E. Chamitoff for Anderson; Sandra H. Magnus for Tani; Russian cosmonauts Roman Y. Romanenko and Mikhail B. Kornienko for Yurchikhin and Kotov.

Source: Xinhua