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CX2SA > ISS 12.10.05 00:06l 75 Lines 3405 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: [sarex] EXP 12 HISTORY
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SUBMITTED BY ARTHUR N1ORC - AMSAT A./C #31468
Expedition 12: Veteran Crewmen for ISS Science, Assembly Prep
Two veteran crewmembers will make up the 12th crew of the International
Space Station since continuous human presence began on the orbiting
laboratory in November 2000.
In addition to marking the fifth anniversary of this uninterrupted
presence of men and women in space, the crewmembers also will bring the
Station into the new year and welcome the resumption of Space Shuttle
flights to their home in orbit.
The six-month-plus stay of Expedition 12 will focus on Station assembly
preparations, maintenance and science in microgravity. The commander is
William McArthur, 54, a retired Army colonel. Cosmonaut Valery Tokarev,
52, a Russian Air Force colonel, will serve as flight engineer and Soyuz
commander.
McArthur is making his fourth flight into space. Tokarev visited the
Station in his previous spaceflight, on a Shuttle mission in 1999.
McArthur and Tokarev did launch on a Soyuz spacecraft in early October
from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
McArthur and Tokarev did spend more than a week with their predecessors,
Expedition 11 Commander Sergei Krikalev and NASA Science Officer John
Phillips. Handover includes briefings on Station safety, systems,
procedures, equipment and science.
Olsen returned to Earth on Expedition 11's Soyuz with Krikalev and Phillips.
McArthur and Tokarev were to have been joined during Expedition 12 by
European Space Agency Astronaut Thomas Reiter of Germany, 47. He was to
fly into space on the STS-121 mission.
With that Shuttle mission delayed until no earlier than March 2006,
Reiter would arrive at the ISS in the final days of the Expedition 12
increment. Reiter, who flew for six months on the Russian space station
Mir, would be the first non-American or non-Russian long-duration
crewmember on the Station. He will fly under a commercial agreement
between ESA and Roscosmos.
When Reiter arrives at the Station, the long-duration crew will have
three people for the first time since May 2003.
Station operations and maintenance will take up a considerable share of
Expedition 12's time. But science-oriented education activities, Earth
observation and scientific experiments, both with and without crew
involvement, will continue.
The crew will work on a number of scientific experiments. The Payload
Operations Center at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville,
Ala., will operate some experiments without crew input and others work
autonomously.
Station assembly work could include preparation for expansion of the ISS
main truss and for installation of additional solar arrays.
Plans are taking shape for spacewalks by McArthur and Tokarev. They
focus on continued outfitting of Station hardware and electrical systems
and preparing external hardware for the addition of station elements.
McArthur has two previous spacewalks, while Tokarev will be making his
first.
Expedition 12 will see the arrival of an unpiloted Russian Progress
cargo vehicle. The crewmembers also will relocate their Soyuz spacecraft
from the Pirs docking port to the Zarya docking port to free the Pirs
airlock for spacewalks.
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