Expedition 25

Preflight preparations

At the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Expedition 25 Soyuz Commander Alexander Kaleri, NASA Flight Engineer Scott Kelly and Russian Flight Engineer Oleg Skripochka took part in prelaunch activities from 26 September to 4 October 2010. These included suited and unsuited fit checks in their Soyuz spacecraft and the raising of flags outside their crew quarters. The Soyuz TMA-01M spacecraft was mated to its booster and moved to Launch Complex 5 on 5 October 2010 for final preparations.

Mission highlights

Progress M-08M launched from Baikonur's Gagarin launch pad on 27 October 2010 and docked with the Pirs module nadir port on 30 October 2010, delivering about 2.5 tons of supplies. During its approach, a problem forced flight controllers to instruct cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri to activate the TORU manual docking equipment at a range of 194 meters. Kaleri, working in the Zvezda module, remotely piloted the spacecraft to a successful docking using television views and joysticks.

Did You Know?

• During Expedition 25 and 26, 504 sessions of 41 experiments were planned, including seven new experiments such as Molniya-Gamma and Sprut-2.
• Space shuttle Discovery's STS-133 mission was rescheduled from 3 November 2010 to 3 February 2011.