Home From Space, NASA Astronaut Joe Acaba Set For Interviews

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Sep 19, 2012, 12:25 ET

HOUSTON, Sept. 19, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA astronaut Joe Acaba of Southern California, who returned to Earth Sept. 17 after four months on the International Space Station, will be available for live satellite interviews from 7-8 a.m. CDT on Wednesday, Sept. 26.

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To participate in the interviews, reporters must contact Seth Marcantel at 281-792-7515 no later than 2 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 25. B-roll featuring highlights of Acaba's mission will air at 6:30 a.m. before the start of the interviews.

Acaba, who was born in Inglewood, Calif., but considers nearby Anaheim his hometown, launched to the complex on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft May 15, spending 123 days aboard the station as a flight engineer of the Expedition 31 and 32 crews.

Acaba supported the arrival of the first commercial resupply spacecraft, SpaceX's Dragon, in late May; an undocking, re-docking and final undocking demonstration of the Russian ISS Progress 47 cargo ship; the first single-day launch-to-docking demonstration of Progress 48; the arrival and departure of the third Japanese cargo ship; and served as intra-vehicular crew member for two U.S.-based spacewalks, helping to restore a critical power unit and exchange a faulty camera on the station's robotic arm. Acaba also participated in numerous scientific research experiments and performed regular maintenance and operational tasks aboard the orbiting complex.

Acaba previously spent 13 days in space as mission specialist during space shuttle Discovery's STS-119 mission to the station in 2009, where he conducted two spacewalks totaling 12 hours and 57 minutes.

Acaba received a bachelor's degree in geology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a master's degree in geology from the University of Arizona. He was selected as an astronaut in 2004. Acaba's biography is available at:
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/acaba-jm.html

NASA TV's Media Channel #103 will carry the b-roll and will be used to conduct the interviews. It is an MPEG-4 digital C-band signal, carried by QPSK/DVB-S modulation on satellite AMC-18C, transponder 3C, at 105 degrees west longitude, with a downlink frequency of 3760 MHz, vertical polarization, data rate of 38.80 MHz, symbol rate of 28.0681 Mbps, and 3/4 FEC. A Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) compliant Integrated Receiver Decoder (IRD) is needed for reception. The Compression Format is MPEG-4, Video PID = 0x1031 hex / 4145 decimal, AC-3 Audio PID = 0x1035 hex /4149 decimal, MPEG I Layer II Audio PID = 0x1034 hex /4148 decimal.

For NASA TV streaming video, and additional downlink and scheduling information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For information about the International Space Station, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/station

SOURCE NASA