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New crew heads for space station
From Journalist Stefano Coledan
(CNN) -- A replacement crew for the international space station hitched a ride aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft Saturday and streaked into orbit from Central Asia, beginning a two-day chase of the orbital outpost. With the loss of the space shuttle Columbia on February 1 and the consequent grounding of the shuttle fleet until at least September 2004, once again NASA had to send one of its astronauts to the space station using a Russian capsule. Aboard the Soyuz are two other astronauts: one Russian and one Spanish. Liftoff from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome came at 9:38 a.m. Moscow time (1:38 a.m. EDT) in a mostly clear sky. The trio was in orbit some nine minutes later. Called Expedition 8, the two-astronaut crew -- station commander Michael Foale and flight engineer Alexander Kaleri -- will trade places with Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and NASA science officer Edward Lu. As Expedition 7, they have been aboard the station since late April. The third crewmember flying to the station is Spain's Pedro Duque, from the European Space Agency. He will return to Earth on October 27 along with the outgoing space station residents. Malenchenko, Lu and Duque will depart aboard the Soyuz spacecraft that launched Expedition 7 in April. Besides swapping crews, the spacecraft change is necessary because the safe lifespan for a Soyuz in orbit is about six months. Normally, the Russian craft are launched and docked to the international complex to provide its residents with a lifeboat in case they need to leave the station in a rush. Foale, who's on his sixth space mission, faced such a predicament in 1997, when an unmanned Progress cargo ship crashed against the Mir space station, causing a severe air leak that almost forced the astronaut and two Russian colleagues to abandon the station. About five months earlier, Kaleri and five other Mir crewmembers had to deal with another dangerous situation: a 15-minute fire caused by a faulty oxygen generator. Kaleri was also one of the last two cosmonauts who flew to the Mir space station and prepared it for deorbit in 2001. The team launched on Saturday is the second two-person crew taking up residence aboard the station. Before the loss of Columbia, the station had three person crews. But the smaller crew has been able to maintain the 20 hours a week of scientific research achieved by previous crews.
"I was very concerned that without the shuttle to deliver us to orbit with a large amount of extra payload or equipment, we wouldn't have much to do," said Foale, a physicist who holds U.S. and British citizenship. Duque will conduct 15 experiments, mainly medical and biological, sponsored by the Spanish government. "During this flight, I will have more time than my colleagues to tend to the experiments. I will carry out almost as many scientific activities as the station crew will as it spends six months aboard the station," said Duque at a press conference in Baikonur in reply to Spanish media questions about his role in the mission. Duque's mission is officially referred to as "Cervantes" after Miguel de Cervantes, the author who wrote "Don Quixote" -- the character eager to explore the universe and the mysteries of life.
In Cervantes' honor, the Spanish astronaut is carrying into orbit a copy of "Don Quixote" on a CD-ROM. The disk will be signed by all the astronauts aboard the station and then brought back to Earth. Duque was scheduled to have flown to the space station in April, but he was bumped as a result of the decision to send only two astronauts. During a customary pre-flight ceremony in Baikonur, NASA's deputy space station manager Charles Precourt expressed gratitude to Russian officials for their help while shuttle flights are on hold. "Thank you everyone for your support," Precourt said. The Soyuz will dock to the space station at 11:11 a.m. Monday Moscow time (3:11 a.m. EDT). Foale and Kaleri are scheduled to use it again to return to Earth on April 29, 2004.
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