Space Station Crew and U.S. Record Holder Available for Interviews

HOUSTON - After being separated for nearly five months, the International Space Station Expedition 14 crew has reunited and returned to the United States for post-mission debriefs. Commander Mike Lopez-Alegria, Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter will be available Thursday, May 17, for satellite interviews from NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston.

The three crew members will be available from 6-8:30 a.m. CDT. To participate, media should contact Michael Hare at 281-483-8631 or the Johnson newsroom at 281-483-5111 by 1 p.m. Wednesday, May 16.

The three worked together on-orbit between Sept. 20 and Dec. 19, 2006. Reiter, originally part of the Expedition 13 crew, transitioned to Expedition 14 and returned to Earth on space shuttle Discovery’s STS-116 mission in December. Lopez-Alegria and Tyurin remained on the station until their return on a Soyuz spacecraft that landed in Kazakhstan on April 21.

During Expedition 14, Lopez-Alegria completed five spacewalks and broke three U.S. space records: most number of spacewalks, most cumulative spacewalk time, and longest duration of a single spaceflight. Lopez-Alegria has completed 10 spacewalks in his career, logging a cumulative spacewalk time of 57 hours, 40 minutes. He spent more than 215 days on the station.

The interviews and b-roll of Expedition 14 activities will air live on NASA Television. The b-roll airs Thursday at 5:30 a.m. and again at 7 a.m. For NASA TV downlink and streaming video information, visit:


http://www.nasa.gov/ntv