PUBLIC INVITED TO SHARE SPACE STATION FLIGHT THURSDAY

May 23, 2006

James Hartsfield
Johnson Space Center, Houston
(281) 483-5111



Report #J06-061

PUBLIC INVITED TO SHARE SPACE STATION FLIGHT THURSDAY

The public can relive six months in space Thursday with International Space
Station Commander Bill McArthur, who landed last month after 190 days in
orbit.

McArthur will discuss his mission in a 6:30 p.m. CDT presentation at Space
Center Houston on Thursday, May 25. The event is free and will include
slides, videos and a question-and-answer session in the Northrop Grumman
Theater.

The doors will open at 6 p.m. CDT. Seating is limited and available on a
first-come, first-served basis. Once the 580-seat theater fills, guests will
be seated in an adjacent area to watch the program on closed-circuit
television.

McArthur, along with Russian cosmonaut and Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev,
flew the Expedition 12 mission, launching Sept. 30, 2005, and landing April
8 in Kazakhstan. While in orbit, McArthur and Tokarev conducted two
spacewalks and continued station maintenance and scientific experiments.

Along with celebrating the holidays and marking the fifth year of continuous
human occupation of the station, the crew experienced several unique moments
in orbit. They became the first spaceflight to link to a major concert,
conversing with Paul McCartney as he played a wakeup song for them live from
California. McArthur also showed support for the Houston Astros during the
2005 World Series, banning all "Sox" from the station for the
duration.

During McArthur and Tokarev's flight, other visitors to the station included
spaceflight participants Gregory Olsen and Marcos Pontes. Olsen launched
with Expedition 12 and then landed with Expedition 11 under a commercial
contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency. Pontes, the first Brazilian
astronaut, flew to the space station with the Expedition 13 crew and spent
about eight days conducting experiments before returning to Earth with
McArthur and Tokarev under a similar contract.


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Jacques :-)

www.spacepatches.nl