NASA Holds Briefings to Preview Space Station Expeditions

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Mar 05, 2012, 03:28 ET

HOUSTON, March 5, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston will hold two briefings Tuesday, March 20, to preview the upcoming International Space Station Expedition 32 and 33 missions. NASA Television and the agency's website will broadcast the briefings live.

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At 11 a.m. CDT, the International Space Station Program and Science Overview Briefing will cover mission priorities and objectives, which include hundreds of research experiments, a Russian spacewalk, international and commercial cargo deliveries to the complex, and a commercial cargo demonstration flight.

The briefing participants include:

-- Michael Suffredini, International Space Station Program manager
-- Dina Contella, Expedition 32 lead flight director
-- Tara Ruttley, associate International Space Station Program scientist

At 1 p.m., Expedition 32/33 crew members Sunita Williams of NASA, Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Yuri Malenchenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency will discuss their mission. They are set to launch to the space station aboard the Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft July 15 and return to Earth in November.

Williams, Hoshide and Malenchenko are three of the six crew members comprising Expeditions 32 and 33. When they arrive at the station, they will join NASA astronaut Joseph Acaba, and Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin.

Following the news conference, interview opportunities with the crew members are available in person, by phone or through internet videoconferencing. To reserve an interview opportunity, news media representatives must contact the Johnson newsroom at 281-483-5111 by 5 p.m., Friday, March 16.

To participate in the news conferences from a NASA center, U.S. journalists must call that center's public affairs office by 5 p.m. local time on Monday, March 19. To participate in the briefings by phone, media representatives must call the Johnson newsroom 15 minutes before each briefing. Priority will be given to journalists participating in person; questions by 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., Monday, March 12.

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