HOUSTON -- NASA Television will air the landing of the Expedition 18 crew and a visiting spaceflight participant on Wednesday, April 8. Russian managers on Friday postponed the Soyuz landing one day and switched to a more southerly landing site in Kazakhstan because of soggy conditions at the original site.

Expedition 18 Commander E. Michael Fincke, Flight Engineer and Soyuz Commander Yury Lonchakov and Spaceflight Participant Charles Simonyi will return to Earth at 2:15 a.m. CDT, which is 1:15 p.m. local time in Kazakhstan. The landing will take place near the town of Dzhezkazgan, which is west of Karaganda and southeast of the usual landing zone near Arkalyk. Fincke and Lonchakov have been aboard the orbiting laboratory since October 2008 and will land in the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft that carried them into orbit.

HOUSTON -- NASA Television will air the landing of the Expedition 18 crew and a visiting spaceflight participant on Wednesday, April 8. Russian managers on Friday postponed the Soyuz landing one day and switched to a more southerly landing site in Kazakhstan because of soggy conditions at the original site.

Expedition 18 Commander E. Michael Fincke, Flight Engineer and Soyuz Commander Yury Lonchakov and Spaceflight Participant Charles Simonyi will return to Earth at 2:15 a.m. CDT, which is 1:15 p.m. local time in Kazakhstan. The landing will take place near the town of Dzhezkazgan, which is west of Karaganda and southeast of the usual landing zone near Arkalyk. Fincke and Lonchakov have been aboard the orbiting laboratory since October 2008 and will land in the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft that carried them into orbit.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station took refuge inside their Russian-built Soyuz lifeboat Thursday when a potentially life-threatening piece of space debris zipped too close to their orbiting laboratory.

The three astronauts, two Americans and one Russian, moved into the station's attached Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft at 12:35 p.m. EDT (1635 GMT) as a safety precaution in case the debris - a small piece of a spent satellite motor - slammed into the orbiting lab and ripped a hole in its outer hull. The astronauts were ready to evacuate the space station if the debris hit the station and depressurized its living space.

Internet visitors can now see the Earth as never before -- live from the International Space Station via streaming video, seven days a week.

The streaming video views of Earth and the exterior structure of the station are from cameras mounted outside the laboratory complex, orbiting Earth at 17,500 miles an hour at an altitude of 220 miles. The video is transmitted to the ground -- and Web viewers -- primarily while the astronauts aboard the complex are asleep, usually from about 1 p.m. to 1 a.m. CST. When live feeds are not available, a map showing the current location and path of the station will be streamed from NASA's Mission Control in Houston.

Tucked away with the new hardware set to launch into space aboard NASA's shuttle Discovery on Wednesday night is a desperately-needed spare part for the International Space Station's urine recycler.

The urine recycling system, which was first delivered to the International Space Station (ISS) last November by the shuttle Endeavour, has been malfunctioning since it was installed. Though the technology may sound icky, it is considered vital for the space station to accommodate crews of six astronauts, double its current occupancy of three.

"It is a priority to get it on orbit, installed, and get the urine processing facility back hopefully functioning and working," Discovery's payload manager, Robby Ashley, said in a Tuesday briefing here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. "And as well, it's important that we get the failed unit that's on orbit now back down on the ground so we can continue with our failure investigation."

The International Space Station Program has announced a change in how two future crew members will return home. NASA astronaut Nicole Stott and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk will swap seats on the space shuttle and Russian Soyuz spacecraft to help ensure a timely homecoming for Thirsk.

Thirsk will launch to the station on a Soyuz in May and return to Earth on that same vehicle in November, instead of aboard space shuttle Atlantis at the end of the STS-129 mission. Stott, who will launch to the station on shuttle Discovery's STS-128 mission, will return aboard Atlantis with the STS-129 crew. She had been slated to come home aboard the Soyuz that Thirsk now will occupy.

NASA wants your opinion in naming the International Space Station's Node 3 - a connecting module and its cupola - before the two segments travel to space and are installed on the orbiting laboratory. The name should reflect the spirit of exploration and cooperation embodied by the space station, and follow in the tradition set by Node 1- Unity- and Node 2- Harmony.

Space shuttle Endeavour will deliver the Node 3 components during the STS-130 mission targeted for December 2009. Once the cupola is attached to one of the module's six ports, it will offer astronauts a spectacular view of both their home planet and their home in space. The cupola's six rectangular windows and one circular window overhead will show a panoramic view that will be unrivaled by any other spacecraft ever flown. Aside from providing a perfect location to observe and photograph the Earth, the cupola also will contain a robotics workstation, where astronauts will be able to control the station's giant robotic arm.

The first wave of an astronaut team set to double the International Space Station's population later this year is gearing up for what promises to be a busy mission aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Commanded by veteran Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, the space station's three-man Expedition 19 crew is training for a planned March 25 launch that will ultimate be followed by another three-astronaut team to bring the orbital lab up to a six-person crew in May.

"Doubling your crew size means a lot," said NASA astronaut Michael Barratt, who forms the core of the joint Expedition 19/20 crew with Padalka, in a Friday briefing. "Certainly, onboard it means there'll be a lot of people in line for a small number of bathrooms, for the exercise equipment, for the galley table. Everything that, essentially, provides support for the crew, we're going to stretch those resources quite a bit."

NASA is a step closer to the first flight test of the rocket that will send humans on their way to the moon as part of the agency's Constellation Program. Rocket hardware critical for the test, known as Ares I-X, was completed this week at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. The flight of Ares I-X will be an important step toward verifying analysis tools and techniques needed to develop Ares I, NASA's next crew launch vehicle.

The Langley-designed and built hardware is engineered to represent the Orion crew module and a launch abort system that increases crew safety. In late January, the rocket elements will be shipped from Langley to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This hardware and other elements from around the country will be integrated into the Ares I-X rocket, the first in a series of unpiloted test vehicles.

Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fincke, aboard the International Space Station with Flight Engineers Sandy Magnus and Yury Lonchakov, recently filmed a high-definition tour of the orbiting complex. The 35-minute tour will air as a special Video File on NASA Television's HD Channel 105 at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. CST Thursday and Friday.

The special Video File also will be broadcast in standard-definition on NASA TV immediately following the regularly scheduled daily Video File broadcasts. For technical information on how to receive the special broadcast in high definition, and for NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit: