Expedition 18 was the 18th permanent crew of the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ...

(ISS). The first two crew members,

Michael Fincke Edward Michael "Mike"/"Spanky" Fincke (born March 14, 1967) is an American astronaut who formerly held the American record for the most time in space (381.6 days). His record was broken by Scott Kelly on October 16, 2015. Mike Fincke was bor ...

, and

Yuri Lonchakov Yury Valentinovich Lonchakov (russian: link=no, Юрий Валентинович Лончаков; born 4 March 1965) is a Russian former cosmonaut and a veteran of three space missions. He has spent 200 days in space and has conducted two space ...

were launched on 12 October 2008, aboard

Soyuz TMA-13 Soyuz TMA-13 (russian: Союз ТМА-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 20 ...

. With them was astronaut

Sandra Magnus Sandra Hall Magnus (born October 30, 1964) is an American engineer and a former NASA astronaut. She returned to Earth with the crew of STS-119 ''Discovery'' on March 28, 2009, after having spent 134 days in orbit. She was assigned to the crew of ...

, who joined the Expedition 18 crew after launching on STS-126 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 orb ...

astronaut

Koichi Wakata is a Japanese engineer and a JAXA astronaut. Wakata is a veteran of four NASA Space Shuttle missions, a Russian Soyuz mission, and a long-duration stay on the International Space Station. During a nearly two-decade career in spaceflight, he has ...

, 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 (russian: Салижан Шакирович Шарипов, uz, Solijon Shokirovich Sharipov, ) (born 24 August 1964) is a Kyrgyzstani cosmonaut of Uzbek descent. Sharipov is a co-author and investigator for the Adva ...

, 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 (russian: Гeннадий Иванович Падалка; born 21 June 1958 in Krasnodar, Soviet Union) is a Russian Air Force officer and a Roscosmos cosmonaut. Padalka currently holds the world record for List of spac ...

– Commander – RSA (for Lonchakov) * Michael Barratt- Flight Engineer – NASA (for Fincke) *

Timothy Kopra Timothy Lennart "Tim" Kopra (born April 9, 1963) is an engineer, a Colonel in the United States Army and a retired NASA astronaut. He served aboard the International Space Station as a flight engineer for Expedition 20, returning to Earth aboar ...

– Flight Engineer – NASA (for Chamitoff) *

Nicole Stott Nicole Marie Passonno Stott (born November 19, 1962) is an American engineer and a retired NASA astronaut. She served as a Flight Engineer on ISS Expedition 20 and Expedition 21 and was a Mission Specialist on STS-128 and STS-133. After 27 ye ...

– Flight Engineer – NASA (for Magnus) *

Soichi Noguchi is a Japanese aeronautical engineer and former 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 mission after the ''Columbia'' disaster. He was a ...

– 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 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 refer to ...

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 engines and propellant. A ''tandem'' or ''serial'' stage is mounted on top of another stage; a ''parallel'' stage is ...

of a

Delta II Delta II was an expendable launch system, originally designed and built by McDonnell Douglas. Delta II was part of the Delta rocket family and entered service in 1989. Delta II vehicles included the Delta 6000, and the two later Delta 7000 ...

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 on 22 February 1978. The GPS satellite constellatio ...

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 Spacecraft collision avoidance is the implementation and study of processes minimizing the chance of orbiting spacecraft inadvertently colliding with other orbiting objects. The most common subject of spacecraft collision avoidance research and deve ...

. 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 Expedition 18 was the 18th permanent crew of the International Space Station (ISS). The first two crew members, Michael Fincke, and Yuri Lonchakov were launched on 12 October 2008, aboard Soyuz TMA-13. With them was astronaut Sandra Magnus, who ...

2008 in spaceflight 2009 in spaceflight