Expedition 21 was the 21st long-duration mission to 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 expedition began on 11 October 2009, with

Frank de Winne Frank, Viscount De Winne (born 25 April 1961, in Ledeberg, Belgium) is a Belgian Air Component officer and an European Space Agency, ESA astronaut. He is Belgium's second person in space (after Dirk Frimout). He was the first ESA astronaut to comm ...

becoming the first ESA astronaut to command a space mission. The handover between

Expedition 20 Expedition 20 was the 20th long-duration flight to the International Space Station. The expedition marked the first time a six-member crew inhabited the station. Because each Soyuz-TMA spacecraft could hold only three people, two separate laun ...

and Expedition 21 required three

Soyuz Soyuz is a transliteration of the Cyrillic text Союз (Russian language, Russian and Ukrainian language, Ukrainian, 'Union'). It can refer to any union, such as a trade union (''profsoyuz'') or the Soviet Union, Union of Soviet Socialist Republi ...

vehicles being docked to the station at the same time, the first time this has occurred. Soyuz TMA-16 brought the final members of Expedition 21 to the ISS, along with

space tourist Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism. Tourists are motivated by the possibility of viewing Earth from space, ...

Guy Laliberté Guy Laliberté, (born 2 September 1959) is a Canadian billionaire businessman and poker player. Along with Gilles Ste-Croix, he is the co-founder of Cirque du Soleil, which was founded in 1984. The Canadian circus company's shows have since be ...

. Laliberté returned to Earth on

Soyuz TMA-14 The Soyuz TMA-14 (, ''Union TMA-14'') was a Soyuz programme, Soyuz flight to the International Space Station, which launched on 26 March 2009. It transported two members of the Expedition 19 crew as well as spaceflight participant Charles Simonyi ...

with two members of Expedition 20 on 11 October 2009. Nicole P. Stott was the last ISS expedition crew member to fly on the

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable launch system, reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. ...

. She returned to Earth aboard

STS-129 STS-129 (ISS assembly sequence, ISS assembly flight ULF3) was a NASA Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS). ''Space Shuttle Atlantis, Atlantis'' was launched on November 16, 2009, at 14:28 Eastern Time Zone, EST, and lan ...

in November 2009.

Crew

;Source:

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

Backup crew

André Kuipers André Kuipers (; born 5 October 1958) is a Dutch physician and ESA astronaut. He became the second Dutch citizen, third Dutch-born and fifth Dutch-speaking astronaut upon launch of Soyuz TMA-4 on 19 April 2004. Kuipers returned to Earth ab ...

- Commander * Dimitri Kondratyev *

Chris Hadfield Chris Austin Hadfield (born August 29, 1959) is a Canadian retired astronaut, engineer, fighter pilot, musician, and writer. As the first Canadian to perform extravehicular activity in outer space, he has flown two Space Shuttle missions and ...

* Shannon Walker * Aleksandr Skvortsov * Catherine Coleman

References

External links

NASA's Space Station Expeditions page
{{ISS expeditions Expeditions to the International Space Station 2009 in spaceflight