MagISStra/Exp 26 astronauts depart Star City / ESA TV News / 03-12-2010

The next transmission of the ESA TV Service will be:

ESA TV Exchanges

03-Dec-10 12:00 – 13:00 GMT

REPLAY: 03-Dec-10 00:00 – 00:00 GMT

MagISStra/Exp 26 astronauts depart Star City

ESA TV News

Background information on the transmission:

On 15 December, ESA’s astronaut Paolo Nespoli will be launched in a Soyuz TMA spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a challenging 6-month mission on the International Space Station (ISS). Nespoli, together with fellow crew-members Dmitri Kondratyev and Catherine Coleman, will be members of Expeditions 26/27.

This will be Paolo’s second time aboard the ISS: he flew in 2007 on a Space Shuttle to deliver and install the Node-2 module. Paolo’s mission will be Europe’s third long-duration mission on the ISS. Between December 2010 and June 2011 he will be part of the ISS crew as a flight engineer.

On December 3 the astronauts, together with their back up team, depart the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre at Star City for Baikonur prior to their launch on Dec 15th.

This news feed will contain highlights of traditional steps that have been followed since the 60s for departure ceremonies that notably included a visit to the Gagarin monument in Red Square last week.

After the feed, the highlights will be available via the ESA TV ftp server.

For more info on this subject please check the script that is online as a DOC file under :

http://television.esa.int/photos/

More background information can be found on the website below.

The MPEG-2 files are on the ESA ftp server in the folder entitled :

Transmission details:

Eutelsat W2A @ 10degE

Transponder F5 Channel H

D/link freq: 12739.83 MHz

Pol: X horizontal

Symb rate: 5.632

FEC: 3/4