Expedition 11

Mission objectives

Expedition 11 commander Sergey Krikalev and flight engineer John Phillips arrived at the International Space Station aboard Soyuz TMA-6 on 17 April 2005 at 02:19 UTC, joined by European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori for a short-duration stay. After a one-week handover, Expedition 10 commander Salizhan Sharipov and flight engineer Leroy Chiao departed aboard Soyuz TMA-5 with Vittori on 24 April 2005 at 18:44 UTC. On 28 July 2005 at 11:18 UTC, the crew received the first Space Shuttle visit since Expedition 6: STS-114, the first Return to Flight mission after the Columbia disaster.

Space Shuttle Discovery docked, delivering a Control Moment Gyroscope, External stowage platform 2, and about 4,100 kg of cargo via the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Raffaello. Discovery undocked on 6 August 2005, taking the MPLM back. During the mission, Krikalev surpassed Sergei Avdeyev's record for total time in space (747.593 days) on 16 August 2005, the 123rd day of the mission; his cumulative time reached 803 days, 9 hours, 39 minutes upon landing.

Soyuz TMA-7 docked on 3 October 2005, bringing the Expedition 12 crew. Thomas Reiter of ESA was scheduled to join via STS-121 in October 2005 but, due to that mission's delay until 2006, he became a crew member of Expedition 13.

Spacewalks

Expedition 11 had two spacewalks scheduled, but just one was carried out. On 18 August 2005, the crew spent 4 hours and 58 minutes outside the station. They retrieved a Biorisk experiment container, an MPAC and SEED panel from Zvezda, and the Matroska experiment. They also mounted a TV camera on Zvezda, inspected a Korma contamination tablet, and swapped out a materials exposure container.