ISS: Expedition 28

Crew & expedition duration:

Exp 28 crew path

This Expedition 28 patch represents the teamwork among the international partners – USA, Russia, Japan, Canada, and the ESA – and the ongoing commitment from each partner to build, improve, and utilize the ISS. Prominently displayed in the background is our home planet, Earth – the focus of much of our exploration and research on our outpost in space. Also prominently displayed in the background is the Moon. The Moon is included in the design to stress the importance of our planet's closest neighbor to the future of our world. Expedition 28 is scheduled to occur during the timeframe of the 50th anniversary of both the first human in space, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and the first American in space, astronaut, Alan Shepard. To acknowledge the significant milestone of 50 years of human spaceflight, the names "Gagarin" and "Shepard" as well as "50 Years" are included in the patch design.

Backup Crew

EVA data:

Mission details

• Expedition 27 Flight Engineer-2 Andrey Borisenko became Expedition 28 Commander at 2135 UTC on May 23, 2011 (on Soyuz undocking), with Flight Engineer-1 Aleksandr Samokutyaev and Flight Engineer-3 Ron Garan. Samkokutyaev is also Commander of the Soyuz TMA-21 ferry ship, with Borisenko and Garan as his flight engineers.
• Endeavour undocked from the Station at 0355 UTC on May 30, 2011.
• On Jun 7 the Soyuz TMA-02M spaceship was launched from Baikonur, carrying Sergey Volkov, Mike Fossum and Satoshi Furukawa. It docked with the Rassvet module at 2118 UTC on Jun 9, 2011.
• On Jun 11, 2011 the orbit of the Station was 344 x 346 km x 51.6 deg. Between Jun 12 and Jun 17, in four burns using the engines of the European ATV-2 cargo ship, Johannes Kepler, the orbit was raised to 374 x 389 km - the highest it's been since October 2003.
• On Jun 20 the Johannes Kepler undocked from the Zvezda aft port at 1446 UTC; a burn at 1706 UTC on Jun 21, 2011 lowered its orbit to 220 x 380 km, and another burn at 2004 UTC was used to send it into a -2 x 379 km orbit towards destructive reentry in the Pacific.
• Progress M-11M docked with Zvezda on Jun 23, 2011 at 1637 UTC. Further boosts from the Progress M-11 engines in late June put the station at 381 x 395 km by Jul 4, a height last seen in Jun 2003. The highest ever orbit for the Station was 396 x 403 km in Dec 1998, early in its history.
• On Jul 10, 2011 at 1507 UTC orbiter Atlantis (STS-135) docked with Pressurized Mating Adapter 2 (PMA-2) on the end of the Harmony module at the ISS. On this mission, only four astronauts were aboard instead of the usual six to eight, to make it easier to return them on Soyuz ships if anything goes wrong.
• Commander Chris Ferguson, pilot Doug Hurley and mission specialists MS-1 Sandra Magnus and MS-2 Rex Walheim joined the Expedition 28 crew of Commander Andrey Borisenko and flight engineers FE-1 Aleksandr Samokutyaev, FE-3 Ron Garan, FE-4 Sergey Volkov, FE-5 Satoshi Furukawa and FE-6 Mike Fossum. The Expedition 28 crew have dual roles on the Russian ferry ships, with Samokutyaev as komandir (commander) of Soyuz TMA-21 with Borisenko and Garan as bortinzhener (flight engineer) BI-1 and BI-2, and Volkov as komandir of Soyuz TMA-02M with Fossum and Furukawa as BI-1 and BI-2.
• Astronauts Fossum and Garan made a spacewalk from the Quest airlock on Jul 12, 2011 using suits EMU 3010 and 3009; the airlock was depressurized below 0.7 psi at 1320 UTC and repressurized at 1953 UTC. The failed Pump Module S/N 02 was retrieved from ELC-2 and put on the LMC in the cargo bay, and the RRM experiment was moved from LMC to the EOTP location on the Station's Dextre robot arm. A small experiment called ORMatE-III, launched to ISS on STS-134 as part of the MISSE-8 project, was removed from the airlock and installed on ELC-2 next to the main MISSE-8 PEC exposure experiment, and the spare PMA-3 docking port was wrapped in a thermal protection cover to prevent it overheating.
• Atlantis undocked from ISS on Jul 19, 2011 at 0628 UTC and on Jul 20 it deployed the small 4 kg Picosat Solar Cell Testbed satellite. At 0849 UTC on Jul 21 the OMS engines were fired to lower the orbit to 46 x 389 km. Atlantis entered the atmosphere at 0925 UTC and touched down on Runway 15 at Kennedy Space Center at 0957 UTC, bringing to an end the final Shuttle flight.
• Expedition 28 continues with Borisenko, Samkutyaev, Garan, Volkov, Furukawa, and Fossum aboard ISS. The next US astronaut to fly in space is scheduled to be Dan Burbank, Flight Engineer-2 on the Soyuz TMA-22 mission slated for launch in September 2011.
  Soyuz TMA-21 and Soyuz TMA-02M remain docked at the Station.
• On Aug 3, 2011 astronauts Volkov and Samokutyaev conducted spacewalk Russian VKD-29 from the Pirs module. The airlock was depressurized at 1435 UTC and the hatch was opened at 1450 UTC. The astronauts deployed the RadioSkaf-V amateur radio satellite and installed the BTLS-N lasercom terminal on the Zvezda module. They also jettisoned a thermal cover from the BTLS-N and installed the Biorisk-MSN exposure package outside the Pirs module. Hatch was closed at 2113 UTC and the airlock was presumably repressurized soon afterwards. According to Andrey Krasil'nikov, Volkov used suit Orlan-MK No. 4 and Samokutyaev used No. 6.
• Progress M-11M undocked from Zvezda at 0938 UTC on Aug 23, 2011. After several maneuvers to carry out the Radar-4 experiment, the vehicle was deorbited over the Pacific at 0934 UTC on Sep 1.
• The Progress M-12M cargo vessel (mission 44P) failed to reach orbit after launch on Aug 24, 2011.
  The failure leaves the Station crew with sufficient supplies, but will delay the launch of the Expedition 29 replacement crew and the Soyuz TMA-03M spaceship on a Soyuz-FG rocket (ISS mission 28S) until the Soyuz family is requalified. The return to Earth of the first half of the Expedition 28 crew has also been briefly delayed and is now scheduled for Sep 15-16.
• Soyuz TMA-21 undocked from the Poisk module at 0038 UTC on Sep 16, 2011 carrying Aleksandr Samokutyaev, Ron Garan and Andrey Borisenko. This was the end of Exp. 28.

External links:

• Spaceflight 101: Exp.28 Information
  
• Wikipedia: Exp. descriptions
• Spacefacts: Exp. description

Astrophilately covers:

Cosmic Mail: Bleu ISS boardcancel and special Mir-date cancel, STS-135 docking and undocking cancel Moscou, signed by the crew. - Credit: #417