Expedition 15
Fifteen expedition to the ISS with truss expansions and ballistic landing.
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Expedition 15 marked the fifteenth crewed mission to the International Space Station. Four astronauts served on the team, though typically only three were stationed aboard at once. The station's main truss received two additions during this time: the S3/S4 segment via STS-117 and the S5 segment via STS-118.
Crew
Flight engineer Sunita Williams was the first Expedition 15 member to reach the station, arriving on 11 December 2006 via STS-116. She had been part of Expedition 14 before commander Fyodor Yurchikhin took over. Yurchikhin and flight engineer Oleg Kotov arrived on 9 April 2007 aboard Soyuz TMA-10.
NASA announced on 26 April 2007 that Williams would come home on STS-117 instead of STS-118. Her replacement, Clayton Anderson, arrived on Atlantis on 10 June 2007. The mission ended after Expedition 16 commander Peggy Whitson arrived on Soyuz TMA-11 and the command ceremony on 19 October 2007.
Mission details
The Soyuz TMA-10 capsule separated on 21 October 2007, and Moscow Mission Control reported it entered a ballistic trajectory, landing 340 km short of the intended Kazakhstan site. Landing occurred without incident; by 10:55 UTC all crew were out and the vehicle secured. Prior ballistic Soyuz landings included Soyuz TMA-1 for Expedition 6, and another occurred with Soyuz TMA-11 on 19 April 2008 for Expedition 16. Three EVAs were conducted: 30 May 2007 (Yurchikhin/Kotov, 5 hours 25 minutes), 6 June 2007 (Yurchikhin/Kotov, 5 hours 37 minutes), and 23 July 2007 (Yurchikhin/Anderson, 7 hours 41 minutes).
More in Expeditions to the International Space Station
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Expedition 15 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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