spacetoday.net: Next ISS crew named

Posted: Wed, May 3, 2006, 7:39 AM ET (1139 GMT)
ISS illustration (NASA)

NASA announced Tuesday that it has named two astronauts for the next long-duration crew for the International Space Station, who will join a Russian cosmonaut there. Two members of the Expedition 14 crew, Michael Lopez-Alegria and Mikhail Tyurin, will fly to the ISS in September on a Soyuz spacecraft. They will later be joined by the third member of the ISS crew, astronaut Sunita Williams, who will come to the station on the STS-116 shuttle mission, which would fly either late this year or early next year, depending on the shuttle schedule. Tyurin has already spent a tour on the ISS, as a member of the Expedition 3 crew in 2001. Lopez-Alegria is a veteran of three shuttle flights, two of which visited the ISS, while Williams will be making her first space flight.