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

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MEDIA ADVISORY M13-160
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NASA Astronaut Available for Interviews on Eve of Space Station Mission
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NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio, a Waterbury, Conn., native who is making
final preparations for a launch to the International Space Station, will be
available for live satellite interviews from 6-7 a.m. EDT Friday, Oct. 25.

Mastracchio will participate in the interviews from Gagarin Cosmonaut
Training Center in Star City, Russia, and depart the following day for the
launch site in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Leading up to the live interviews, NASA
Television will air at 5:30 a.m. pre-recorded video of Mastracchio's mission
training and previous spaceflights.

To participate in the interviews, reporters should contact Karen Svetaka at
NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston at 281-483-8684 no later than 2 p.m.
Thursday, Oct. 24.

Mastracchio earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Connecticut
and postgraduate degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the
University of Houston at Clear Lake. A veteran of three space shuttle
flights, Mastracchio was a mission specialist on STS-106, STS-118 and
STS-131, and has logged almost 40 days in space. He also conducted six
spacewalks totaling 38 hours, 30 minutes.

Mastracchio will launch aboard a Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur
Cosmodrome at 11:14 p.m. EST Nov. 6, along with Koichi Wakata of the Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency and Mikhail Tyurin of the Russian Federal Space
Agency. The trio will start their time aboard the station as part of
Expedition 37, and will return to Earth in May 2014 as part of the Expedition
38 crew.

When Mastracchio, Wakata Tyurin arrive at the station Nov. 7, they will join
Expedition 37 astronauts Karen Nyberg and Michael Hopkins of NASA, Luca
Parmitano of the European Space Agency and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov,
Sergey Ryazanskiy and Fyodor Yurchikhin.

This 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 almost six months.

For more information on NASA TV coverage, see:

*http://www.nasa.gov/ntvnews

Mastracchio's complete biography is available at:

*http://go.nasa.gov/YlLlv5

Follow Mastracchio and other NASA astronauts via Twitter at:

*@AstroRM and @NASA_Astronauts*

For more information about the International Space Station and Expedition 38,
visit:

*http://www.nasa.gov/station


David Cottle

UBB Owner & Administrator