Expedition 30/31 Space Station Crew Conducts Briefing, Interviews

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Sep 12, 2011, 10:41 ET

HOUSTON, Sept. 12, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Three International Space Station crew members will discuss their upcoming Expedition 30 and 31 missions in a news conference at 1 p.m. CDT Tuesday, Sept. 20, from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The briefing will be broadcast live on NASA Television and the agency's website. Reporters may ask questions from participating NASA centers or by phone.

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NASA astronaut Don Pettit, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers are set to launch to the station aboard a Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft later this year. They will round out the six-man crew aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Following the news conference, round-robin interview opportunities are available in-person, by phone or via satellite. To reserve an interview opportunity, U.S. media representatives must contact the Johnson newsroom at 281-483-5111 by 5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 16.

To participate in the news conference from a NASA center, U.S. journalists must call the center's public affairs office by 5 p.m. local time on Monday, Sept. 19. Reporters participating in the briefing by phone must call the Johnson newsroom by 12:45 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 20. Priority will be given to media participating in person and questions from reporters on the phone will be taken as time permits.

International journalists wishing to attend in person at Johnson must contact the newsroom and submit the required paperwork for credentials by 5 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 13.

Pettit, Kononenko and Kuipers are three of six crew members who will comprise Expeditions 30 and 31. Aboard the station, they will join NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoli Ivanishin.

The NASA Live Interview Media Outlet (LIMO) that will be used for satellite interviews following the news conference is a digital satellite C-band downlink by uplink provider Americom. It is on satellite AMC 3, transponder 9C, located at 87 degrees west, downlink frequency 3865.5 Mhz based on a standard C-band, horizontal downlink polarity, FEC is 3/4, data rate is 6.0 Mbps, symbol rate is 4.3404 Msps, transmission DVB-S, 4:2:0.

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

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

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

http://www.nasa.gov/station

SOURCE NASA