NASA Astronaut Available for Satellite Interviews Before First Spaceflight

WASHINGTON, May 7, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor will be available at 8 a.m. EDT Tuesday, May 15, for live satellite interviews one last time before she launches June 6 on her first spaceflight. The interviews will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website.

Auñón-Chancellor currently is at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, with her crewmates for final prelaunch training until they depart May 19 for their launch site at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Auñón-Chancellor and her crewmates, Alexander Gerst of ESA (European Space Agency) and Sergey Prokopyev of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, will launch from Baikonur on the Russian Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft at 7:11 a.m. EDT (5:11 p.m. local time in Kazakhstan) June 6. They are scheduled to return to Earth in December.

Leading up to the interviews from the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, NASA TV will air highlights from Auñón-Chancellor's training beginning at 7:30 a.m.

To interview Auñón-Chancellor, media must contact Sarah Volkman at 281-483-9071 or [email protected] no later than 3 p.m. Friday, May 11. Media participating in the interviews must tune to the NASA TV Media Channel. Satellite tuning information is available at:

https://go.nasa.gov/1pOWUhR

Auñón-Chancellor is one of nine members of the 20th NASA astronaut class, selected in July 2009. She originally came to NASA in 2006 as a flight surgeon and served as the deputy lead for medical operations for NASA's Orion spacecraft before joining the astronaut corps.

Originally from Fort Collins, Colorado, Auñón-Chancellor earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and a doctorate in medicine from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston's McGovern Medical School.

Auñón-Chancellor will arrive at the International Space Station June 8, joining Expedition 56 Commander Drew Feustel and Flight Engineer Ricky Arnold of NASA, as well as Flight Engineer Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos. The crew will continue several hundred experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science currently underway and scheduled to take place aboard humanity's only orbiting lab.

Follow Auñón-Chancellor on Twitter at:

https://twitter.com/astroserena

Learn more about the International Space Station, its research and crews at:

https://www.nasa.gov/station

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SOURCE NASA