Expedition 30

Mission highlights

Expedition 30 began with the departure of the Expedition 28/29 crew aboard Soyuz TMA-02M on 21 November 2011 at 23:00 UTC, leaving the Expedition 29/30 crew on the station. That crew had docked with the ISS in Soyuz TMA-22 on 16 November 2011 at 05:24 UTC, after launching from Baikonur Cosmodrome on 14 November 2011 at 04:14 UTC. The first three crew members remained alone for about five and a half weeks until they were joined on 23 December 2011 by the Expedition 30/31 crew, who arrived via Soyuz TMA-03M. That spacecraft launched on 21 December 2011 at 13:16 UTC and docked on 23 December at 15:19 UTC.

On 21 December 2011, commander Dan Burbank observed a pass of comet C/2011 W3 Lovejoy, which passed within 140000 km of the Sun's surface and survived the encounter. On 16 February 2012, Russian crew members Oleg Kononenko and Anton Shkaplerov performed the first spacewalk of 2012, moving a Strela crane from the Pirs module to the Poisk module and installing debris shields and materials experiments. On 20 February 2012, the crew commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of John Glenn's orbital flight by speaking to him via video link while he was on-stage with NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden at Ohio State University.

The European Space Agency's third Automated Transfer Vehicle, Edoardo Amaldi, launched on 23 March 2012 and docked on 28 March, carrying about 6595 kg of propellants, water and dry cargo. It boosted the station's altitude and remained docked until September 2012 before deorbiting. Progress M-15M launched on 20 April 2012 and docked on 22 April, following the undocking of Progress M-14M on 19 April, which had been docked since 28 January.