Expedition 29 was the 29th long-duration expedition 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 formally began on 16 September 2011, with the departure from the ISS of the Soyuz TMA-21 spacecraft. Astronauts Satoshi Furukawa, Michael Fossum and Sergey Volkov, who had arrived at the ISS aboard Soyuz TMA-02M in June 2011, began their Expedition 29 service at this time. Soyuz TMA-22, which brought the remaining three Expedition 29 crew members to the ISS, was originally scheduled to launch in September 2011, but due to the launch failure of the Progress M-12M resupply vehicle on 24 August, its launch was delayed to 14 November. It docked successfully with the ISS on 16 November 2011. Expedition 29 officially ended with the undocking of Soyuz TMA-02M on 21 November 2011. Furukawa, Fossum, and Volkov returned to Earth aboard the spacecraft, while astronauts Dan Burbank, Anton Shkaplerov, and Anatoli Ivanishin remained on the ISS as part of Expedition 30.

Crew

;Source:

NASA

Mission highlights

Soyuz TMA-02M launch

The expedition's first three crew members launched aboard Soyuz TMA-02M from

Baikonur Cosmodrome The Baikonur Cosmodrome is a spaceport operated by Russia within Kazakhstan. Located in the Kazakh city of Baikonur, it is the largest operational space launch facility in terms of area. All Russian Human spaceflight, crewed spaceflights are l ...

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...

, at 21:18

UTC Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communica ...

on 7 June 2011. The crew consisted of Sergey Volkov (

Roscosmos The State Corporation for Space Activities "Roscosmos", commonly known simply as Roscosmos (), is a State corporation (Russia), state corporation of the Russian Federation responsible for space science, space flights, List of space agencies, c ...

), Satoshi Furukawa (

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 ...

), and Michael Fossum (

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 ...

). Their backups were Oleg Kononenko (Roscosmos), Donald Pettit (NASA), and André Kuipers (ESA). Soyuz TMA-02M docked successfully to the ISS on 9 June 2011, at 5:19 pm EDT.

Soyuz TMA-22 launch

Soyuz TMA-22 launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome at 04:14 UTC on 14 November 2011, carrying Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoli Ivanishin (Roscosmos), and Daniel Burbank (NASA). The spacecraft was placed into a parking orbit, and docked successfully with the ISS at 5:24 am GMT on 16 November 2011."Russian, U.S. crew safely dock with space station"

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency ...

, 16 November 2011.

Departure of Soyuz TMA-02M

Expedition 29 concluded with the departure of Soyuz TMA-02M from the ISS at 11:00 pm GMT on 21 November 2011, carrying astronauts Fossum, Volkov and Furukawa. The spacecraft soft-landed safely (albeit on its side) in

at 2:26 am GMT on 22 November."3 Space Station Astronauts Land Safely in Kazakhstan"
Space.com, 21 November 2011. Retrieved 22 November 2011.

References

External links

{{Use British English, date=August 2010 2011 in spaceflight Expeditions to the International Space Station