Expedition 21 was the 21st long-duration mission to 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 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 (J ...

). 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 ESA astronaut. He is Belgium's second person in space (after Dirk Frimout). He was the first ESA astronaut to command a space mission ...

becoming the first

ESA , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (120 ...

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 and Ukrainian, 'Union'). It can refer to any union, such as a trade union (''profsoyuz'') or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Сою́з Сове́тских Социалис ...

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. During the period from 2001 to 2009, seven space tourists made eight s ...

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. In January 2018, Laliberté was ranked by ''Forbes'' as the 11th wealthiest ...

. Laliberté returned to Earth on

Soyuz TMA-14 The Soyuz TMA-14 (russian: Союз ТМА-14, ''Union TMA-14'') was a 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 Char ...

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 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. Its official 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 land ...

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 US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

Backup crew

* André Kuipers - Commander *

Dimitri Kondratyev Dmitri Yuryevich Kondratyev (russian: Дмитрий Юрьевич Кондратьев, born on 25 May 1969 in Irkutsk, Russia) is a retired Russian cosmonaut. He served as a crew member on the International Space Station long duration mission ...

* Chris Hadfield *

Shannon Walker Shannon Walker (born June 4, 1965) is an American physicist and a NASA astronaut selected in 2004. She launched on her first mission into space on June 25, 2010, onboard Soyuz TMA-19 and spent over 163 days in space. She returned to space fo ...

* Aleksandr Skvortsov *

Catherine Coleman Catherine Grace "Cady" Coleman (born December 14, 1960) is an American chemist, an engineer, a former United States Air Force colonel, and a retired NASA astronaut. She is a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions, and departed the Internatio ...

References

External links

NASA's Space Station Expeditions page
{{Use British English, date=August 2010 Expeditions to the International Space Station 2009 in spaceflight