Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington, DC                  October 16, 2000
(Phone:  202/358-1726)

Eileen Hawley
Johnson Space Center, Houston TX
(Phone:  281/483-5111)

NOTE TO EDITORS: N00-049

NASA MISSION MANAGERS TO DISCUSS SPACE STATION EXPEDITION

     With the launch of the first resident crew to the 
International Space Station (ISS) scheduled for the end of the 
month, NASA managers will discuss details of the Expedition 1 
mission in a pre-launch news conference on Wednesday, Oct. 25, at 
2 p.m. EDT at the Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX.

The news conference will be broadcast on NASA Television with 
question-and-answer capability from NASA centers.

Jeff Hanley, Lead Flight Director for Expedition 1, will provide 
comprehensive details of the vanguard mission to the new station 
by Expedition Commander Bill Shepherd, Soyuz Commander Yuri 
Gidzenko and Flight Engineer Sergei Krikalev. ISS Flight Director 
John Curry will offer details of the crewmembers' activities from 
the time they are launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in 
Kazakhstan through their docking to the international complex two 
days later.

Shepherd, Gidzenko and Krikalev are tentatively scheduled to be 
launched about 3:16 a.m. EST Oct. 30 on a Soyuz rocket. Docking is 
planned for Nov. 1 about 4:10 a.m. EST.

Ninety minutes after docking, Shepherd will open the hatch to the 
Zvezda module's aft docking port and the crew will make history by 
entering the ISS to begin the permanent human habitation of the 
orbiting scientific center. A final pre-launch news conference by 
the three crewmembers at Baikonur will be held on the eve of their 
launch on Sunday, Oct. 29, and will replayed on NASA TV.

NASA TV can be found on GE-2, Transponder 9C at 85 degrees West 
longitude, vertical polarization, with a frequency of 3880 MHz, 
and audio of 6.8 MHz.

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