NASA Television Set to Cover March Soyuz Landing Operations

WASHINGTON, March 6, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Three crew members aboard the International Space Station are scheduled to end almost six months on the orbiting laboratory on March 10, and NASA Television will provide complete coverage.

Expedition 38 Commander Oleg Kotov and Flight Engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Flight Engineer Michael Hopkins of NASA will undock their Soyuz spacecraft from the station on March 10 at 8:02 p.m. EDT, heading for a landing in Kazakhstan, southeast of Dzhezkazgan at 11:24 p.m. (9:24 a.m. on March 11 local time in Dzhezkazgan). The crew's return will wrap up 166 days in space since launching from Kazakhstan on Sept. 26, 2013.

At the time of undocking, Expedition 39 will begin formally aboard the station under the command of Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the first Japanese commander of the complex. Wakata and his crewmates, NASA Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio and Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos, will operate the station as a three-person crew for two weeks until the arrival of three new crew members, U.S. astronaut Steve Swanson and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev, who are scheduled to launch from Kazakhstan March 25, U.S. time.

NASA Television coverage will begin on Sunday morning, March 9, with the change of command ceremony in which Kotov will turn over command of station operations to Wakata, and it will continue March 10 and 11 with Expedition 38 landing and post-landing activities. All following times are in EDT.

Sunday, March 9:
4:55 a.m. – Expedition 38/39 change of command ceremony

Monday, March 10:
4:30 p.m. – Farewells and hatch closure (hatch closure scheduled at 4:45 p.m.)
7:45 p.m. – Undocking (undocking scheduled at 8:02 p.m.)
10:15 p.m. – Landing (landing scheduled at 11:24 p.m.)

Tuesday, March 11:
1:30 a.m. - Video File of Hatch Closure, Undocking and Landing Activities
2 p.m. – Video File of Post-Landing Activities and Interview with Michael Hopkins in Kazakhstan

For more information on the International Space Station, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

For b-roll and other media resources, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/stationnews

For the NASA Television schedule and coordinate, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

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SOURCE NASA