On this day in space! May 27, 2009: Expedition 20 doubles space station's crew size
On May 27, 2009, three astronauts launched to the International Space Station to complete the crew of Expedition 20.
On May 27, 2009, three astronauts launched to the International Space Station to complete the crew of Expedition 20. Expedition 20 was the first six-person crew to live and work at the space station for a long-duration stay.
Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk and Belgian astronaut Frank De Winne lifted off on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Two days later, they arrived at the space station, where they were greeted by the Russian commander Gennady Padalka, NASA astronaut Michael Barratt and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata. For the first time in ISS history, the space station was packed to its full capacity of six crewmembers.
Previous Expedition crews consisted of three people. But ever since Expedition 20, the space station has continued to support crews of six.
Because the Soyuz capsules that ferry people to and from the ISS can only fit three people, only half of each Expedition crew can launch at a time. This is why it took two launches to get the full crew of Expedition 20 to the space station.
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Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.
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