Robert Brent "Bob" Thirsk, is a Canadian retired engineer and physician, and a former Canadian Space Agency astronaut. He holds the Canadian record for the most time spent in space. He became an officer of the Order of Canada (OC) in 2013 and was named to the Order of British Columbia (OBC) in 2012.
Yury Valentinovich Lonchakov is a Russian former cosmonaut and a veteran of three space missions. He has spent 200 days in space and has conducted two spacewalks. From 2014 to 2017, Lonchakov served as head of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.
André Kuipers is a Dutch physician and ESA astronaut. He became the second Dutch citizen, third Dutch-born and fifth Dutch-speaking astronaut upon launch of Soyuz TMA-4 on 19 April 2004. Kuipers returned to Earth aboard Soyuz TMA-3 11 days later.
Brigadier Roberto Vittori, OMRI is an Italian Air Force officer and an ESA astronaut. After graduating from the Italian Accademia Aeronautica in 1989, Vittori flew in the Italian Air Force. He then trained as a test pilot in the United States.
Thomas Arthur Reiter is a retired European astronaut and is a Brigadier General in the German Air Force currently working as ESA Interagency Coordinator and Advisor to the Director General at the European Space Agency (ESA). He was one of the top 25 astronauts in terms of total time in space. With his wife and two sons he lives near Oldenburg in Lower Saxony.
The Luigi Broglio Space Center (BSC) located near Malindi, Kenya, is an Italian Space Agency (ASI) Spaceport. It was named after its founder and Italian space pioneer Luigi Broglio. Developed in the 1960s through a partnership between the Sapienza University of Rome's Aerospace Research Centre and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the BSC served as a spaceport for the launch of both Italian and international satellites (1967–1988). The center comprises a main offshore launch site, known as the San Marco platform, as well as two secondary control platforms and a communications ground station on the mainland.
Expedition 11 (2005) was the 11th expedition to the International Space Station, using the Soyuz TMA-6, which stayed during the expedition for emergency evacuation.
Soyuz TMA-8 was a Soyuz mission to the International Space Station (ISS) launched by a Soyuz FG launch vehicle.
Gaetano Arturo Crocco was an Italian scientist and aeronautics pioneer, the founder of the Italian Rocket Society, and went on to become Italy's leading space scientist. He was born in Naples.
Major Paolo Angelo Nespoli is an Italian astronaut and engineer of the European Space Agency (ESA). In 2007, he first traveled into space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery as a mission specialist of STS-120. In December 2010 he again traveled into space aboard the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft as an Expedition 26/27 flight engineer. Nespoli's third spaceflight was on board Soyuz MS-05, which launched in July 2017 for Expedition 52/53. He was also the European Space Agency's oldest active astronaut prior to his retirement in 2019.
Akihiko Hoshide is a Japanese engineer, JAXA astronaut, and former commander of the International Space Station. On August 30, 2012, Hoshide became the third Japanese astronaut to walk in space.
A mission patch is a cloth reproduction of a spaceflight mission emblem worn by astronauts and other personnel affiliated with that mission. It is usually executed as an embroidered patch. The term space patch is mostly applied to an emblem designed for a crewed space mission. Traditionally, the patch is worn on the space suit that astronauts and cosmonauts wear when launched into space. Mission patches have been adopted by the crew and personnel of many other space ventures, public and private.
Soyuz TMA-15 was a crewed spaceflight to the International Space Station. Part of the Soyuz programme, it transported three members of the Expedition 20 crew to the space station. TMA-15 was the 102nd crewed flight of a Soyuz spacecraft, since Soyuz 1 in 1967. The Soyuz spacecraft remained docked to the space station during Expedition 20 and Expedition 21 as an emergency escape vehicle. The mission marked the start of six-person crew operations on the ISS.
NASA Astronaut Group 16 was a group of 44 astronauts announced by NASA on May 1, 1996. The class was nicknamed "The Sardines" for being such a large class, humorously implying that their training sessions would be as tightly packed as sardines in a can. These 44 candidates compose the largest astronaut class to date. NASA selected so many candidates in preparation for the anticipated need for ISS crew members, along with regular shuttle needs. Nine of the 44 astronauts selected were from other countries including 5 from Europe and 2 from Canada and Japan.
Soyuz TMA-20 was a human spaceflight to the International Space Station (ISS) and was part of the Soyuz programme. It lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on December 15, 2010, and docked with the ISS two days later. The three-person crew of Soyuz TMA-20 – Dmitri Kondratyev, Catherine Coleman and Paolo Nespoli – represented the ISS partner organizations of Roscosmos, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). Soyuz TMA-20's crew represented half of the members of Expedition 27; the other three members of the expedition arrived at the station on board Soyuz TMA-21 on April 6, 2011. The COSPAR ID of Soyuz TMA-20 was 2010-067A. It is ISS flight 25S.
Expedition 26 was the 26th long-duration mission to the International Space Station. The expedition's first three crew members – one US astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts – arrived at the station on board Soyuz TMA-01M on 10 October 2010. Expedition 26 officially began the following month on 26 November, when half of the crew of the previous mission, Expedition 25, returned to Earth on board Soyuz TMA-19. The rest of the Expedition 26 crew – one US astronaut, one Russian cosmonaut and one ESA astronaut – joined the trio already on board when their spacecraft, Soyuz TMA-20, docked with the station on 17 December 2010.
The year 2011 saw a number of significant events in spaceflight, including the retirement of NASA's Space Shuttle after its final flight in July 2011, and the launch of China's first space station module, Tiangong-1, in September. A total of 84 orbital launches were conducted over the course of the year, of which 78 were successful. Russia, China and the United States conducted the majority of the year's orbital launches, with 35, 19 and 18 launches respectively; 2011 marked the first year that China conducted more successful launches than the United States. Seven crewed missions were launched into orbit during 2011, carrying a total of 28 astronauts to the International Space Station. Additionally, the Zenit-3F and Long March 2F/G carrier rockets made their maiden flights in 2011, while the Delta II Heavy made its last.
Soyuz TMA-03M was a spaceflight to the International Space Station (ISS). It launched on 21 December 2011 from Site One at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, carrying three members of Expedition 30 to the ISS. TMA-03M was the 112th flight of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, since the first in 1967, and the third flight of the modernised Soyuz-TMA-M version. The docking with the International Space Station took place at 19:19 Moscow Time on 23 December, three minutes ahead of schedule.
Luigi Broglio, was an Italian aerospace engineer, airforce lieutenant colonel and dean of the school of aeronautical engineering at the University of Rome La Sapienza. Known as "the Italian von Braun", he is best known as the architect of the San Marco programme.
Soyuz TMA-16M was a 2015 flight to the International Space Station. It transported three members of the Expedition 43 crew to the station. TMA-16M was the 125th flight of a Soyuz spacecraft, the first having launched in 1967.
