The Expedition 17 Crew

The Crew

The Expedition 17 crew completed its mission in October 2008! The commander of the crew was Sergei Volkov. The flight engineer for this mission was Oleg Kononenko. They are both from Russia. They flew to the space station in the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. They launched on April 8, 2008. NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman was waiting for them on the space station.

Reisman traveled to the station in March 2008 aboard the space shuttle Endeavour. He lived and worked with Volkov and Kononenko on the space station.

On May 31, 2008, NASA astronaut Gregory Chamitoff traveled to the space station as part of the STS-124 crew on space shuttle Discovery. He took Reisman's place on the station as a flight engineer. Reisman returned to Earth on Discovery.

Chamitoff lived and worked with Volkov and Kononenko on the space station until the Expedition 18 crew arrived.

The Patch

Before its mission, the Expedition 17 crew designed a mission patch. At the bottom of the patch is Earth. It is the base where all space exploration begins. The arrow and star point away from Earth toward the universe. This shows that humans are working to explore farther into space.

The Russian and American flags represent the countries the Expedition 17 crew members are from. The flags are touching on the patch to show that the United States and Russia worked together on this mission.

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