Expedition 58 was the 58th 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 ...
, which began on December 20, 2018 with the departure of the Expedition 57 crew. It was commanded by cosmonaut
Oleg Kononenko, with astronauts
Anne McClain and
David Saint-Jacques as flight engineers; the trio launched on board
Soyuz MS-11 on December 3, 2018, marking the
100th orbital launch of the year.
Kononenko, McClain and Saint-Jacques subsequently transferred to
Expedition 59 on March 15 2019, when
Aleksey Ovchinin,
Nick Hague and
Christina Koch arrived on board
Soyuz MS-12.
History
During early planning, the expedition was scheduled to include rookie cosmonaut
Nikolai Tikhonov
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Tikhonov ( – 1 June 1997) was a Soviet Russian-Ukrainian statesman during the Cold War. He served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1980 to 1985, and as a First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, ...
. However, Tikhonov's assignment was postponed (for the second time) due to delays in launching the Russian
Nauka module.
Tikhonov has been reassigned to the
Soyuz MS-14 flight scheduled for late 2019.
As of October 2018, plans called for the expedition to feature a crew of five: cosmonaut
Aleksey Ovchinin and astronaut
Nick Hague would have joined the
Expedition 57 crew in October 2018, and subsequently transferred to Expedition 58; they would have been joined by Kononenko, McClain and Saint-Jacques in December 2018. Ovchinin and Hague would then have returned to Earth in April 2019. Subsequently, the
Expedition 59 mission would have begun with Kononenko as commander. However, the
Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft carrying Ocvhinin and Hague aborted during its launch on October 11, 2018; the two crew returned safely to Earth.
Following the Soyuz MS-10 abort, NASA Administrator
Jim Bridenstine
James Frederick Bridenstine (born June 15, 1975) is an American military officer and politician who served as the 13th administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Bridenstine was the United States representative ...
announced on October 23, 2018 that Soyuz flights to the ISS were expected to resume in December 2018.
At first, it was assumed that Expedition 58 would initially consist of three crew members who would then be joined later by the crew of Soyuz MS-12, bringing the crew up to six. However, in the post-launch news conference for Soyuz MS-11, NASA announced that the Soyuz MS-12 crew would become the station
Expedition 59/
60 crew. Expedition 58 was therefore a three person increment.
Crew
Saint-Jacques is the first Canadian resident on the space station since
Chris Hadfield served as commander of
Expedition 35, which concluded on May 13, 2013 almost six years prior.
Uncrewed spaceflights to the ISS
Resupply missions that visited the International Space Station during Expedition 58:
Notes
References
{{ISS expeditions
Expeditions to the International Space Station
2018 in spaceflight
2019 in spaceflight