SB SPACE @ ARL $ARLS003
ARLS003 Three radio amateurs on next ISS crew

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QST de W1AW  
Space Bulletin 003  ARLS003
From ARRL Headquarters  
Newington, CT  May 4, 2006
To all radio amateurs

SB SPACE ARL ARLS003
ARLS003 Three radio amateurs on next ISS crew

NASA astronauts Michael Lopez-Alegria, KE5GTK, and Sunita Williams,
KD5PLB, and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, RZ3FT, have been named
as the 14th crew of the International Space Station. Expedition 14
is scheduled to begin this fall. Lopez-Alegria will serve as
Expedition 14 commander and as NASA ISS science officer for the
six-month mission.

Lopez-Alegria and Tyurin--who was on the ISS Expedition 3 crew--are
now training to launch aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in
September. Williams' arrival on the ISS depends on NASA's shuttle
fleet being back in operation. She's scheduled to travel to the ISS
via shuttle--her first space flight--and join Expedition 14 in
progress.

If all goes according to current plans, Williams will replace
European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter, DF4TR, whose duty
tour is scheduled to bridge part of expeditions 13 and 14--the first
time that's happened in the history of the ISS. Unclear at this
point is whether Reiter will return on the shuttle or aboard a
Soyuz, so there could be some additional crew overlap.

Plans call for Reiter to go into space when the shuttle returns to
flight this summer, and he'll join Expedition 13's Pavel Vinogradov,
RV3BS, and Jeff Williams, KD5TVQ, whose mission just began.

Vinogradov and Williams this week began unloading supplies from a
Progress cargo craft that docked April 26. An older Progress is
being loaded with trash and readied for undocking in mid-June to
burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. Williams completed his first
Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) school
contact May 1.
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