HOUSTON - The crews of Expeditions 15 and 16, along with Malaysian Spaceflight Participant Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, will discuss their missions during a news conference aboard the International Space Station at 7 a.m. CDT, Monday, Oct. 15.

The 30-minute conference will be broadcast live on NASA Television. Questions from media will be taken from participating sites at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston; Kennedy Space Center, Fla.; NASA Headquarters in Washington; and Russian Mission Control Center, Korolev, Russia. Journalists should contact their preferred site to confirm its participation.

WASHINGTON - NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson arrived at the International Space Station Friday to begin her tenure as the first woman to command a station mission.

Whitson, Soyuz Commander and Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko and Malaysian Spaceflight Participant Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor docked their Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft to the station at 10:50 a.m. EDT. The crew launched on Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Whitson officially will become the station commander after a ceremony Friday, Oct. 19, at approximately 3:15 p.m. EDT. This change of command event will mark the formal handover of the station to Whitson and Malenchenko, just days before the Expedition 15 crew members and Shukor depart.

An International Space Station ARISS school contact has been planned with one of five Malaysian Group of Schools at the National Planetarium in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 16 Oct. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 16:28 UTC.

The contact will be a direct between and Dr. Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor - 9W2MUS and station 9M2RPN. The contact should be audible in most of Malaysia. Interested parties are invited to listen in on the 145.80 MHz downlink. The participants are expected to conduct the conversation in English.

This will be the third ARISS opportunity to establish a radio link between school children and the ISS, also talking to our Malaysian Astronaut. This is going to be a most stimulating experience for school children to learn first hand something about Space and human spaceflight.