New Commander for International Space Shuttle

Image Credit

This amazing image is just staggering - the International Space Station pictured from the Space Shuttle Endeavour.  This was taken after the shuttle and the station began the post-undocking relative separation on February 19 2010.

On 18 March two of the ISS crew members will return to earth - Kazakhstan to be exact - and that means that one of the remaining  crew - Oleg Kotov (left), will become the new station commander.  The new crew members will arrive in the Soyuz TMA-18 on 4 April.

From Flight Engineer to Commander - not bad going!  Kotov has a lot of experience behind him - after all, he did his first space walk in 2007.  He was also aboard the Soyuz craft that took the space tourist Charles Simonyi up in to orbit a few years ago.  We can only wonder if he did for Simonyi what cabin crew do for us when we fly from country to country in those old fashioned things called planes. 

We suspect not.



Kotov Image Credit