"Jacques van Oene" wrote in message
. ..

The arrival of Reiter at the ISS will also mark the return from a
two-member
to a three-member crew. There has not been a threesome onboard since the
Columbia accident in February 2003.

Ken Bowersox, Don Pettit, and Nikolai Budarin (Expedition 6) were aboard ISS
before and after the Columbia accident. It was only upon their return on
Soyuz in April 2003 that ISS went down to two crewmembers.

Reiter will also be taking
part in the commissioning of ESA-developed experiment facilities: the
Pulmonary Function System, the European Microgravity Cultivation System
and
the Minus 80-degrees Laboratory Freezer (MELFI). Further activities will
centre on technology demonstrations, industrial experiments and education.

PFS is part of the Human Research Facility rack 2, and has been checked out
already by Exp. 12 CDR Bill McArthur; Reiter will add new hardware to it,
giving it increased functionality.

On the mission control side, this will be the first use of a European
control centre for a long-duration human spaceflight mission to the ISS.
This will be based at the Columbus Control Centre in Oberpfaffenhofen near
Munich, Germany, which will serve as the control centre for the European
Columbus Laboratory following its launch in 2007. The control centre will
be
the hub of European activity during the mission, monitoring and
coordinating
the activities of Reiter, coordinating with the Houston and Moscow Mission
Control Centres, with the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne and with
various User Support and Operations Centres throughout Europe. The
Columbus
Control Centre, which is being run for ESA by the German Aerospace Centre
(DLR), is already supporting mission preparation and mission simulations
from its control rooms.

We're also going to be working closely with Col-CC and Thomas Reiter, as
several of his experiments will be using payload racks in the U.S. Lab which
we operate from Huntsville.

Reiter's mission is really putting the "International" into ISS...

Tim Horvath
Payload Ops Director
MSFC/POIC
Huntsville, AL