Expedition 43 was the 43rd expedition to the International Space Station. It commenced on 11 March 2015 with the undocking of Soyuz TMA-14M, returning the crew of Expedition 42 to Earth and ended with the departure of Soyuz TMA-15M on 11 June 2015.

The Expedition 43 crew spent an extra "bonus month" on board pending investigation of the Progress M-27M cargo spacecraft failure. On June 8, 2015 ISS adjusted its orbit to move to a safe distance from a piece of orbital space debris.

This expedition also used the ISSpresso machine and tested a special cup designed to be drunk from in microgravity by using capillary flow. This was a further development of a zero gravity cup invented by astronaut Donald Pettit and tested on ISS in 2008. The new zero g coffee cup idea was further developed by a Fluid physicist at Portland State University among others.

Crew

PositionFirst Part (March 2015)Second Part (March 2015 to June 2015)
CommanderUnited States Terry W. Virts, Jr., NASA Second and last spaceflight
Flight Engineer 1Russia Anton Shkaplerov, RSA Second spaceflight
Flight Engineer 2Italy Samantha Cristoforetti, ASI-ESA First spaceflight
Flight Engineer 3Russia Gennady Padalka, RSA Fifth and last spaceflight
Flight Engineer 4Russia Mikhail Korniyenko, RSA Second and last spaceflight
Flight Engineer 5United States Scott Kelly, NASA Fourth and last spaceflight

Source

Spacefacts

Yury Lonchakov was originally supposed to be the Flight Engineer 3. However, he resigned from the Russian Federal Space Agency on September 6, 2013, to take a position at Gazprom. He was also originally supposed to be the commander of Expedition 44.

View of Earth

View of Earth taken during ISS Expedition 43

Cupola view

View of Earth from the Cupola during Expedition 43

See also

External links