NASA Astronaut Butch Wilmore Available for Interviews Before His Space Station Mission

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Sep 02, 2014, 11:34 ET

WASHINGTON, Sept. 2, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore, who is making final preparations for his launch this month to the International Space Station, will be available for live satellite interviews from 6-7 a.m. EDT Monday, Sept. 8.

Wilmore will participate live from the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia. The interviews will be preceded at 5:30 a.m. by a video highlighting his mission training and previous spaceflight.

To schedule an interview time, reporters should contact Seth Marcantel at 281-792-7515 no later than 3 p.m., Friday, Sept. 5.

Wilmore hails from Mt. Juliet, Tennessee and earned degrees from Tennessee Technological University and the University of Tennessee. He is a captain in the U.S. Navy and has accumulated almost 7,000 flight hours and 663 carrier landings in tactical jet aircraft. He was selected as an astronaut in 2000 and piloted space shuttle Atlantis during the STS-129 mission in November 2009. The 10-day mission delivered 30,000 pounds of replacement parts and supplies to the space station.

Wilmore's crew mates are cosmonauts Alexander Samoukutyaev and Elena Serova of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos). The three will launch to the station aboard a Soyuz spacecraft Sept. 25 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. At the space station, they will join Expedition 41 astronauts Reid Wiseman of NASA, Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency and cosmonaut Maxim Suraev of Roscosmos, who launched to the station in May 2014.

The crew will continue supporting several hundred experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science currently under way and scheduled to take place aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Wilmore will assume command of Expedition 42 in November when Expedition 41 returns home. He is scheduled to return to Earth with Samoukutyaev and Serova in March 2015.

Media participating in the live shots must tune to NTV-3. Satellite tuning information is available at:

http://go.nasa.gov/1pOWUhR

For more information on NASA TV coverage, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

Wilmore's biography is available at:

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/wilmore-be.html

Follow Wilmore and all the space station crew members on Instagram:

http://instagram.com/iss

Follow other NASA astronauts via Twitter at:

http://www.twitter.com/NASA_Astronauts

For information about the International Space Station, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station