NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik,
STS-129
mission specialist, participates in the mission's third and final session of
extravehicular activity in November 2009, as construction and maintenance
continued on the International Space Station.
Credits: NASA
|
NASA astronaut Scott Tingle
awaits the start of a spacewalk training session in the
waters of the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at the agency's Johnson Space
Center in Houston.
Credits: NASA
|
NASA and its International
Space Station partners have announced the crew members for missions to the
orbiting laboratory in 2017. The selection includes first-time space flyer NASA
astronaut Scott
Tingle and veteran Randy Bresnik.
“There’s so much going on aboard the space station at this point,
so many science experiments and technology demonstrations,” said Chris Cassidy,
chief of the Astronaut Office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in
Houston. “Scott and Randy have their work cut out for them, but I have no
doubt they’ll do excellent jobs.”
Tingle is a member of NASA’s 2009 astronaut class
and will fly with cosmonauts Ivan Vagner, who is also a first-time flier, and
veteran Alexander Skvortsov, both of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. They
will launch in September 2017. The three will join the station’s Expedition 53
crew of NASA astronaut Jack Fischer, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut
Paolo Nespoli and Roscosmos cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin.
Tingle, a captain in the U.S. Navy, was born in Attleboro,
Massachusetts, but considers Randolph, Massachusetts, his home. He was
commissioned as a naval officer in 1991 and earned the gold wings of a naval
aviator in 1993. He has accumulated more than 4,000 hours in 48 types of
aircraft, 700 carrier landings and 54 combat missions.
Tingle earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from
Southern Massachusetts University in Dartmouth in 1987, and a master’s degree
in mechanical engineering, with a specialty in fluid mechanics and propulsion,
from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, in 1988. He also is a 1998
graduate of the Navy Test Pilot School.
Bresnik’s mission will begin in November 2017, when he and his
crewmates Sergey Ryazansky of Roscosmos and Norishige Kanai of the Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will join Tingle, Skvortsov and Vagner on
the station for Expedition 54.
Bresnik, who considers Santa Monica, California, to be his
hometown, is a retired colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps. Bresnik received his
commission in May 1989 and was designated a Marine Corps aviator in 1992. He
flew the F/A-18 Hornet in support of Operation Southern Watch and Operation
Iraqi Freedom. He has accumulated more than 6,000 hours in 81 types of
aircraft.
Bresnik was selected as an astronaut in May 2004. His first
spaceflight was in November 2009 aboard space shuttle Atlantis for STS-129,
which lasted 11 days. The flight was the 31st shuttle flight to the space
station, during which Bresnik conducted two spacewalks totaling 11 hours and 50
minutes.
Bresnik graduated from The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina,
in 1989 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, and earned a master’s degree
in aviation systems from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 2002. He is
also a 2008 graduate of the U.S. Air Force Air War College.
The crew comprising Expedition 53 will be:
·
Jack Fischer, NASA
·
Paolo Nespoli, ESA
·
Fyodor Yurchikin,
Roscosmos
·
Scott Tingle, NASA
·
Alexander Skvortsov,
Roscosmos
·
Ivan Vagner, Roscosmos
The crew comprising Expedition 54 will be:
·
Scott Tingle, NASA
·
Alexander Skvortsov,
Roscosmos
·
Ivan Vagner, Roscosmos
·
Randy Bresnik, NASA
·
Sergey Ryazansky,
Roscosmos
·
Norishige Kanai, JAXA
The space station is a convergence of science, technology and
human innovation that enables us to demonstrate new technologies and make
research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. It has been continuously occupied
since November 2000 and, since then, has been visited by more than 200 people
and a variety of international and commercial spacecraft. The space station
remains the springboard to NASA's next giant leap in exploration, including
future missions to an asteroid and Mars.
Follow Scott Tingle on Twitter at:
Randy Bresnik will post updates on social media using
#AstroKomrade at:
and
For Twitter updates from all NASA astronauts, follow: