NASA Digest, Vol 39, Issue 7

August 24, 2016  MEDIA ADVISORY M16-102 NASA Astronaut Shane Kimbrough Available for Interviews Before Space Station Mission   NASA Astronaut Shane Kimbrough answers a question from the media at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, on Feb. 24. Kimbrough is scheduled to launch to the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz spacecraft Sept. 23. Credits: NASA NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, who is making final preparations for a September launch to the International Space Station, is available for live satellite interviews from 7 to 8 a.m. EDT Tuesday, Sept. 6. The interviews will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website. Kimbrough will participate in the interviews live from the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia. The interviews will be preceded at 6:30 a.m. by a video highlighting his mission training. To participate, media should contact Thomas Gerczak at 281-792-7515 or thomas.j.gerczak@nasa.gov no later than 3 p.m. Friday, Sept. 2. Media participating in the live shots must tune to NASA Television's NTV-3 channel. Satellite tuning information is available at: http://go.nasa.gov/1pOWUhR Kimbrough and his crewmates, cosmonauts Andrey Borisenko and Sergey Ryzhikov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, will launch aboard a Soyuz spacecraft at 2:17 p.m. Sept. 23 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. This will be the second flight of the upgraded Soyuz MS spacecraft, and the crew will spend two days testing the modified systems before docking to the station at 5:05 p.m. Sept. 25. At the space station, they will join Expedition 49 members NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, Roscosmos cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin and Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi. Together, the six crew members will continue the several hundred experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science currently under way and scheduled to take place aboard humanity's only orbiting lab. A retired Army colonel and native of Killeen, Texas, Kimbrough completed his first spaceflight in 2008 on space shuttle mission STS-126. During this mission, he worked to expand the living quarters of the space station to accommodate a six-member crew – an effort that included two spacewalks, during which he logged 12 hours and 52 minutes outside the orbiting laboratory. Kimbrough is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, and the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. He began his NASA career at the agency's Johnson Space Center as a flight simulation engineer on the Shuttle Training Aircraft before being selected as an astronaut in 2004. This will be Kimbrough's first long-duration stay on the space station. He is scheduled to return to Earth with crew members Borisenko and Ryzhikov in February 2017. Get the latest NASA TV schedule and video streaming information at: http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv Follow the space station crew and mission on social media at: http://twitter.com/space_station http://instagram.com/iss Follow Kimbrough on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/astro_kimbrough