Mission Highlights
28th manned flight to ISS (Flight 11S).
Soyuz TMA-7 is a Soyuz spacecraft which has been launched on October 1, 2005 by a Soyuz-FG rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome.
The spacecraft carried two members of the Expedition 12 crew to the International Space Station, together with the space tourist Gregory Olsen. They replaced the Expedition 11 crew, Commander Sergei Krikalev and John Phillips.
The last member of the original Expedition 12 crew, Thomas Reiter finally launched in July 2006 on STS-121. Owing to shuttle mechanical and weather delays, he was forced to move to Expedition 13.
This was the last flight which is covered by the 1996 "balance" agreement that required the Russians to provide 11 Soyuz spacecraft to ferry joint U.S-Russian crews to and from the International Space Station. Further Soyuz flights needed a renegotiation between NASA and its Russian counterpart, and a modification of the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000.
Read more about this topic: Soyuz TMA-7
Famous quotes containing the word mission:
“The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp and mountain-side, as soon as possible.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)