NASA astronaut Scott
Tingle will be available at 6 a.m. EST Friday, Dec. 1 for live satellite
interviews one last time prior to his upcoming launch to the International
Space Station Dec. 17, on what will be his first mission in space.
Originating from the Gagarin Cosmonaut
Training Center in Star City, Russia, the interviews will air on NASA
Television and the agency’s http://www.nasa.gov/live
website. At 5:30 a.m., NASA TV will run a video feed of highlights from
Tingle’s training.
To interview Tingle, media must contact
Sarah Volkman at 281-483-9071 or sarah.e.volkman@nasa.gov
no later than 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 29. Media participating in the interviews
must tune to the NASA TV Media Channel. Satellite tuning information is
available at:
Tingle is one of nine members of the 20th
NASA astronaut class, selected in July 2009. His astronaut training has
included scientific and technical briefings; intensive instruction in space
station systems, spacewalks and robotics; physiological training; T-38 flight
training; and water and wilderness survival training.
A U.S. Navy captain, Tingle grew up in
Randolph, Massachusetts, and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in
mechanical engineering from Southeastern Massachusetts University in
Dartmouth, now the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and a Master of
Science degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University in West
Lafayette, Indiana. Following graduate school, Tingle spent three years with
the Aerospace Corp., in El Segundo, California, as a technical staff member
in its Propulsion Department. He was commissioned as a U.S. Navy officer in
1991, and accumulated more than 4,500 flight hours in 51 types of aircraft,
750 carrier arrestments and 54 combat missions.
Tingle will arrive at the Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Monday, Dec. 4, for final prelaunch training. He and
his crewmates, Anton Shkaplerov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and
Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), will launch
on the Russian Soyuz MS-07 spacecraft at 2:20 a.m. EST Dec. 17. They are
scheduled to return to Earth next spring.
The flight plan calls for an arrival at the
station two days after launch, where they will join Expedition 54 Commander
Alexander Misurkin of Roscosmos, and Flight Engineers Mark Vande Hei and Joe
Acaba of NASA. The crew members will continue several hundred experiments in
biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science currently underway
and scheduled to take place aboard humanity's only permanently occupied
orbiting lab.
The experiments include Using Brachypodium
distachyon to Investigate Monocot Plant Adaptation to Spaceflight (APEX-06),
which investigates the growth of the common grass species Brachypodium
distachyon in the microgravity environment of space. The grasses grow from
seedlings aboard the station and are returned as frozen samples to
Earth-based labs for detailed analysis and comparison with Earth based
control groups. APEX-06 aims to compare the growth and gene-expression
patterns of Brachypodium distachyon with those of the dicotyledonous model
plant Arabidopsis thaliana, which has been extensively studied in space and
whose behavior in microgravity is better understood.
Understanding how different plants grow in
space can result in improved life support system design and resource planning
for long-term space missions. It also provides a better understanding of
grass and cereal crop stress response systems that can be applied in
agriculture, habitat restoration, and natural resource management on Earth.
Results from this experiment also advance comparative understanding of how
plants use genetic and biomolecular systems to protect themselves under
stressful conditions.
Follow Tingle on Twitter and Instagram at:
and
Learn more about the International Space
Station and its crews at:
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