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Plants Glow To Visualize Stress In Space Station Experiment | Video
Genetically engineered plants on board the International Space Station designed to endure extreme conditions are also designed to glow when stressed. Credit: NASA.

By: VideoFromSpace

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Plants Glow To Visualize Stress In Space Station Experiment | Video - Video

WASHINGTON -- NASA Television will provide live coverage May 12-14 as three crew members aboard the International Space Station end five months in orbit and return to Earth for a scheduled landing May 13.

Expedition 35 Commander Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency, Tom Marshburn of NASA and Roman Romanenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) will undock their Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft from the station at 7:08 p.m. EDT May 13, heading for a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan southeast of Dzhezkazgan at 10:31 p.m. (8:31 a.m. Kazakh time, May 14). They will have spent 146 days in space since their Dec. 19 launch from Kazakhstan.

Undocking will mark the official start of Expedition 36 under the command of Pavel Vinogradov of Roscosmos. Vinogradov and his crewmates, Chris Cassidy of NASA and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, will tend to the station as a three-person crew for two weeks until the arrival of three new crew members, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency.

NASA TV coverage will begin Sunday, May 12, with the change of command ceremony between Hadfield and Vinogradov. Coverage will continue May 13 and 14 with Expedition 35 landing and post-landing activities.

NASA TV's full coverage schedule is as follows (all times EDT):

Sunday, May 12: 3:40 p.m. -- Expedition 35/36 change of command ceremony

Monday, May 13: 3:30 p.m. -- Farewells and hatch closure (hatch closure scheduled at 3:50 p.m.) 6:45 p.m. -- Undocking (undocking scheduled at 7:08 p.m.) 9:15 p.m. -- Deorbit burn and landing (deorbit burn scheduled at 9:37 p.m., landing scheduled at 10:31 p.m.) Midnight --Video file of hatch closure, undocking and landing activities

Tuesday, May 14: Noon -- Video file of post-landing activities and interviews

For NASA TV schedule and video streaming information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For information on the International Space Station or the Expedition 35 crew, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station

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NASA Television to Air Space Station Soyuz Landing

A NASA astronaut sees his work aboard the International Space Station as a means of bringing humanity a little closer to setting foot on Mars.

During a 25-minute webcast Tuesday (May 7), members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportations Subcommittee on Science and Space asked NASA's Tom Marshburn to delve into the science, downtime and other parts of life on the space station.

"I believe I'm living and working in the first Mars vehicle," Marshburn said during the event. "Everything that we've learned here is going to be used, and needs to be used, in the next generation of [space-traveling] vehicles." [The Boldest Mars Missions of All Time]

For example, understanding how to recycle resources efficiently in Earth orbit could lead to life-support systems that help send astronauts to Mars or farther out into the solar system, Marshburn said.

Life in space also changes the perspective of people living on the International Space Station, Marshburn added.

"I wish every head of state around the world could come see our Earth from the cupola," Marshburn said of the Earth-observing glass structure on the bottom of the station. "It's a 360-degree view ... I've found that I've fallen in love with the Earth again. It's almost impossible to pull your eyes away from it."

Although looking out the window is one of Marshburn's favorite pastimes on the station, crewmembers are usually too busy to stare back at Earth during their work hours, he said.

Marshburn told members of the subcommittee that his days in orbit are filled with science. The astronauts are responsible for conducting more than 100 experiments on the orbiting laboratory.

"What surprised me was that how busy and vibrant life and the work here is on the space station," Marshburn said. "The space station is a hard place to go to sleep. There's a lot going on up here. There's so much going on up here that it's hard to stop."

But it isn't all work and no play for the astronauts.

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Space Station Is Big Step Toward Mars, Astronaut Says