Rachel Kraft
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
rachel.h.kraft@nasa.gov
Jay Bolden
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
jay.e.bolden@nasa.gov
MEDIA ADVISORY: M13-067
NASA ASTRONAUT KAREN NYBERG AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEWS BEFORE SPACE STATION MISSION
WASHINGTON -- NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, a Vining, Minn., native who
is making final preparations for a launch to the International Space
Station, will be available for live satellite interviews from 7- 8
a.m. EDT Thursday, May 9.
The interviews will originate from the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training
Center in Star City, Russia. Before they start, NASA Television will
air a video b-roll feed at 6:30 a.m., of Nyberg's mission training
and previous spaceflight.
To participate in the interviews, reporters should contact Seth
Marcantel at 281-792-7515 no later than 3 p.m. Wednesday, May 8.
Nyberg earned an undergraduate degree from the University of North
Dakota and graduate and doctorate degrees from the University of
Texas at Austin. A mechanical engineer by training, she served in
various engineering roles at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston
prior to being selected as an astronaut in 2000. Nyberg previously
flew in space as a mission specialist aboard space shuttle Discovery
on STS-124 in 2008.
Nyberg will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:31
p.m. EDT May 28 aboard a Soyuz spacecraft along with Fyodor
Yurchikhin of the Russian Federal Space Agency and Luca Parmitano of
the European Space Agency. The trio is scheduled to return to Earth
in November.
This launch is the second time in two months a piloted Soyuz
spacecraft will have launched and docked to the International Space
Station within six hours. When the Soyuz arrives at the station, the
crew will join Expedition 36 NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, and
Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin and Pavel
Vinogradov, who launched in March. The crew will participate in
several hundred experiments that cross the fields of biology and
biotechnology, physical science, and earth science during their
mission, which will last nearly six months.
NASA TV's Media Channel 103 will carry the b-roll and will be used to
conduct the interviews. It is an MPEG-4 digital C-band signal,
carried by QPSK/DVB-S modulation on satellite AMC-18C, transponder
3C, at 105 degrees west longitude, with a downlink frequency of 3760
MHz, vertical polarization, data rate of 38.80 MHz, symbol rate of
28.0681 Mbps, and 3/4 FEC. A Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) compliant
Integrated Receiver Decoder (IRD) is needed for reception. The
Compression Format is MPEG-4, Video PID = 0x1031 hex / 4145 decimal,
AC-3 Audio PID = 0x1035 hex /4149 decimal, MPEG I Layer II Audio PID
= 0x1034 hex /4148 decimal.
Nyberg's biography is available at:
http://go.nasa.gov/np5ICw Follow Nyberg and other NASA astronauts via Twitter at:
@AstroKarenN and @NASA_Astronauts
For more information about Expedition 36 and 37, visit:
http://go.nasa.gov/139pjnN For information about the International Space Station, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/station
