• Question: Is there anything specific Tim will be doing on his last day on the ISS?

    Asked by spacefan226 to Andrea, Charlie 🚀, Col Op, Kirsty, Vinita on 17 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Andrea Boyd

      Andrea Boyd answered on 17 Jun 2016:


      Yes – he follows the timeline like always and it was a pretty solid workday!
      Katie and I were both on console this morning.

      He first had the normal start to the day at 0600 and a morning meeting with all the mission control centres together 0720 with his crewmates. First Houston talked then Huntsville then me (I gave big thanks from Europe for the awesome success of his Principia mission) and then Tsukuba and then Moscow talked.

      He then fixed a problem in the Japanese airlock with a bit of help from Jeff. He ran on the treadmill for an hour. He set up some more experiments on the Japanese external platform. He had a private conference with the Soyuz specialists and Tim and Yuri (his crewmates also returning home in the 3 seater Soyuz) to go through the exact choreography of the landing. Finally he participated in the change of command ceremony at about 1.15pm (you can see replays on NASA TV) and then he and the other astronauts are scheduled to take a nap because they have to wake up at 8pm and work all through the night putting on their spacesuits, going into the Soyuz and undocking and returning to Earth. Yuri will pilot Tim and Tim safely home! They land somewhere in Kazakhstan a few hours later and are picked up by helicopters and the landing support team and checked out by their doctors then Yuri flies to Moscow, TimK flies to Houston and our Tim flies to Europe – he will arrive home at Envihab for ‘back to Earth’ rehabilitation at 2am Sunday. My colleagues and I will stay up very late and line the road to the Envihab door to cheer and wave with cups of tea warming our hands! And at 2.05am we will go home and go to sleep 😉

    • Photo: Columbus Operations

      Columbus Operations answered on 23 Jun 2016:


      Agree to Andrea, the most special thing on his last day probably was the change of command ceremony, where Tim Kopra handed over the overall responsibility for the ISS and its crew to Jeff Williams!

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