Expedition 18 was the 18th permanent crew of the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

(ISS). The first two crew members, Michael Fincke, and Yuri Lonchakov were launched on 12 October 2008, aboard

Soyuz TMA-13 Soyuz TMA-13 (, ''Union TMA-13'') was a Soyuz mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The spacecraft was launched by a Soyuz-FG rocket at 07:01 GMT on 12 October 2008. It undocked at 02:55 GMT on 8 April 2009, performed a deorbit burn ...

. With them was astronaut

Sandra Magnus Sandra Hall Magnus (born October 30, 1964) is an American engineer and a former NASA astronaut. She flew to space three times, as mission specialist on STS-112, as ISS crewmember during Expedition 18 and as mission specialist on STS-135. She is al ...

, who joined the Expedition 18 crew after launching on

STS-126 STS-126 was the one hundred and twenty-fourth NASA Space Shuttle mission, and twenty-second orbital flight of the ''Space Shuttle Endeavour'' (OV-105) to the International Space Station (ISS). The purpose of the mission, referred to as ULF2 by ...

and remained until departing on STS-119 on 25 March 2009. She was replaced by

JAXA The is the Japanese national air and space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology development and launch of satellites into o ...

astronaut Koichi Wakata, who arrived at the ISS on STS-119 on 17 March 2009. Gregory Chamitoff, who joined Expedition 18 after Expedition 17 left the station, ended his stay aboard ISS and returned to Earth with the STS-126 crew.

Crew

Crew notes

Salizhan Sharipov Salizhan Shakirovich Sharipov (born 24 August 1964) is a retired Kyrgyz astronaut, cosmonaut of Uzbek descent. Sharipov is a co-author and investigator for the Advanced Diagnostic Ultrasound in Microgravity project. He has been to space twice (lau ...

was originally slated to be the Soyuz commander and Expedition 18 Flight Engineer 1, but was replaced by his back-up, Yuri Lonchakov.

Backup crew

Gennady Padalka Gennady Ivanovich Padalka (; born 21 June 1958 in Krasnodar, Soviet Union) is a Russian Air Force officer and Roscosmos cosmonaut. Padalka is the only person to have served as commander of the International Space Station (ISS) four times. He previ ...

– Commander – RSA (for Lonchakov) * Michael Barratt – Flight Engineer – NASA (for Fincke) * Timothy Kopra – Flight Engineer – NASA (for Chamitoff) * Nicole Stott – Flight Engineer – NASA (for Magnus) *

Soichi Noguchi is a Japanese aeronautical engineer and former Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA astronaut. His first spaceflight was as a mission specialist aboard STS-114 on 26 July 2005 for NASA's first "return to flight" Space Shuttle program, Spac ...

– Flight Engineer – JAXA (for Wakata)

Mission plan

* Launch vehicle: Soyuz TMA-13 * Launch date: 12 October 2008 3:01 a.m. EDT * Docking: 14 October 2008 * Spacewalks: 22 December 2008 (completed 23 December) and 10 March 2009 * Landing: 8 April 2009

March 2009 debris incident

On 12 March 2009, a piece of

debris Debris (, ) is rubble, wreckage, ruins, litter and discarded waste, garbage/refuse/trash, scattered remains of something destroyed, or, as in geology, large rock fragments left by a melting glacier, etc. Depending on context, ''debris'' can ref ...

from the

upper stage A multistage rocket or step rocket is a launch vehicle that uses two or more rocket ''stages'', each of which contains its own Rocket engine, engines and Rocket propellant, propellant. A ''tandem'' or ''serial'' stage is mounted on top of anoth ...

of a

Delta II Delta II was an expendable launch system, originally designed and built by McDonnell Douglas, and sometimes known as the Thorad Delta 1. Delta II was part of the Delta rocket family, derived directly from the Delta 3000, and entered service in ...

rocket used to launch a

GPS satellite GPS satellite blocks are the various production generations of the Global Positioning System (GPS) used for satellite navigation. The first satellite in the system, Navstar 1, was launched by the United States Air Force on 22 February 1978. ...

in 1993, passed close to the ISS. The conjunction between the debris and the Space Station was not detected until it was too late to perform a collision avoidance manoeuvre. The crew prepared to evacuate the station by closing hatches between modules, and boarding the Soyuz spacecraft that was docked to provide emergency crew escape. The debris did not hit the station, instead it passed by at 16:38 UTC, and the crew were cleared to resume operations about five minutes later.

Extra-vehicular activity

References

External links

NASA International Space Station page
{{Use British English, date=August 2010 Expedition 18 2008 in spaceflight 2009 in spaceflight