[sarex] EXP 14 CREW EXTENDED ONE MONTH

[Arthur Rowe]

SUBMITTED BY ARTHUR N1ORC - AMSAT A/C #31468

Astronauts currently working on the International Space Station will 
have their six-month mission extended by another month to avoid early 
spring flooding on the Kazakh steppe, where they are due to land, a 
Russian space official said last Wednesday.

According to a revised schedule, U.S. astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria 
and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin of the Expedition 14 crew, who 
began working on the world's sole orbital station September 20, will 
return to Earth in April instead of March.

They will be joined by the fifth space tourist on their return trip, 
Hungarian-born American software billionaire Charles Simonyi, who is 
expected to arrive at the ISS with the 15th crew.

The flooding makes it "extremely hard to find a dry place for a capsule 
with astronauts to land on, and landing on a flooded steppe may be quite 
dangerous," he said.

European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter of Germany, who has been 
on board the station since July, will work as part of the Expedition 14 
crew until December and will then hand off to astronaut Sunita Williams.