For the first time a Canadian is in command of the International Space Station. Yesterday afternoon Expedition 34 Commander Kevin Ford of NASA passed command over to to Chris Hadfield during a ceremony.
Ford and Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin arrived at the station on October 25 and will make a parachute-assisted landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan on March 15 in their Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft.
Hadfield, who became the first Canadian commander of the orbital laboratory, NASA Flight Engineer Tom Marshburn and Russian Flight Engineer Roman Romanenko will be joined on March 29 by Expedition 35/36 crew members Pavel Vinogradov, NASA Flight Engineer Chris Cassidy and Flight Engineer Alexander Misurkin.