Flight Engineers Roman Romanenko, Frank De Winne and Robert Thirsk of the 20th International Space Station crew will launch in their Soyuz TMA-15 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 6:34 a.m. EDT Wednesday to begin a six-month stay in space.

Expedition 20 will mark the start of six-person crew operations aboard the International Space Station. All five of the international partner agencies - NASA, the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) - will be represented on orbit for the first time.

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) have recently named new astronauts.

The new CSA astronauts are:
1. Jeremy Hansen
2. David Saint-Jacques

The new ESA astronauts are:
1. Samantha Cristoforetti, Italian
2. Alexander Gerst, German
3. Andreas Mogensen, Danish
4. Luca Parmitano, Italian
5. Timothy Peake, British
6. Thomas Pesquet, French

Additional information at the following links.

To commemorate the Hubble Space Telescope's 19 years of historic, trailblazing science, the orbiting telescope has photographed a peculiar system of galaxies known as Arp 194. This interacting group contains several galaxies, along with a "cosmic fountain" of stars, gas, and dust that stretches over 100,000 light-years.

The northern (upper) component of Arp 194 appears as a haphazard collection of dusty spiral arms, bright blue star-forming regions, and at least two galaxy nuclei that appear to be connected and in the early stages of merging. A third, relatively normal, spiral galaxy appears off to the right. The southern (lower) component of the galaxy group contains a single large spiral galaxy with its own blue star-forming regions.

The PS8DX Teresina DX Group is on the air this week from Brazil's Canary Island GI97bf on AO-7, FO-29, AO-51, VO-52, SO-50, and ISS (if available).

http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/news/

NASA astronaut Gregory C. Johnson, a native of Seattle, will be available for live interviews via satellite from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. CDT on Tuesday, April 21. Johnson will make his first trip into space as the pilot of space shuttle Atlantis during STS-125, the final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Launch is targeted for May 12 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

To schedule interviews, reporters should contact NASA's Johnson Space Center newsroom at 281-483-5111 by noon Monday, April 20.

The 11-day flight will include five spacewalks on consecutive days to make repairs and upgrades to the telescope. Johnson will help guide the spacewalkers from inside the shuttle. Atlantis' astronauts will be the last humans to see the Hubble telescope in person.

Richard Garriott, W5KWQ, is a legendary video game programmer/designer and ham radio operator who was the sixth private citizen to fly to the International Space Station (ISS).

Like his father, Owen Garriott, W5LFL, who made history as the first ham to communicate from space with radio amateurs during the STS-9 Space Shuttle mission, Richard was a ham radio pathfinder in his own
right through on-orbit experimentation, implementation of new capabilities, extensive operations using many diverse operations modes, and phenomenal educational outreach initiatives that inspired and transformed the lives of tens of thousands students, worldwide.

The agency plans to make the announcement with the help of Expedition 14 and 15 astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report." The program will air at 11:30 p.m. EDT.

The name, which will not be publicly released until the program airs, was selected from thousands of unique suggestions submitted on NASA's Internet site, www.nasa.gov. The "Help Name Node 3" poll asked people to vote for the module's name either by choosing one of four NASA options or by offering their own suggestion. The poll closed on March 20.

"The node naming poll was organic and took on a life of its own," said Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Space Operations at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We received more than a million entries, in large part because social media Web sites and television programs, such as 'The Colbert Report,' took an interest. This spread overall awareness of the International Space Station."

The Charles in Space Web site has a section where the public has posted space related questions concerning Charles' current mission and his Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) activities. To view the questions and answers, see:

http://www.charlesinspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Read_the_Answers.welc...

NASA and Lockheed Martin's Student Signatures in Space (S3) program will be one of the highlighted projects during this year's Space Day, celebrated annually on the first Friday in May. The mission of Space Day is to use space-related activities to inspire and prepare young people for careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Student Signatures in Space began in 1997 as a way to draw kids into space studies by giving them a personal connection to space. Participating schools are sent large posters for students to sign on Space Day. NASA and Lockheed Martin, of Bethesda, Md., are currently accepting school names for participation. The program is open to elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as science museums and regional Boy Scout and Girl Scout councils.

The next space tourist bound for the International Space Station could launch as early as September despite the lack of available seats aboard Russian spacecraft, the private firm arranging the multimillion-dollar joyrides announced Friday.

Eric Anderson, president and CEO of the Vienna, Va.-based space tourism company Space Adventures, said there is a chance that a paying customer could ride a Russian-built Soyuz spacecraft to the station in a seat that is currently reserved for a professional cosmonaut from Kazakhstan.

"In fact, there is a possibility that one of Space Adventures' clients could launch on Soyuz TMA-16, which is currently scheduled for launch this Sept. 30," Anderson told reporters in a teleconference.