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Sunita settling into her new home

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Our Web Bureau Mumbai
Sunita settling into her new home
Our Web Bureau / Mumbai December 12, 2006
The Expedition 14 crew lost one member and gained another Monday night during the first crew exchange at the International Space Station during a shuttle mission in four years.

NASA Astronaut Sunita Williams, who arrived at the station Monday afternoon with the STS-116 mission, replaced European Space Agency Astronaut Thomas Reiter on the Expedition 14 crew at midnight EST Tuesday. Her crewmates are Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin. Williams will spend six months on the outpost. She will become a member of the Expedition 15 crew in March 2007.

Reiter will wrap up a five-month stay on the station when he leaves with STS-116 next week. He arrived at the station in July with the STS-121 mission to give the station its first three-member crew since May 2003. He was a member of Expedition 13 until Expedition 14 began its tour of duty in September.

The crew rotation became official when their custom-made seatliners were swapped out in the Soyuz spacecraft docked to the station.

Discovery, which docked at 5:12 p.m. Monday, also delivered the P5 integrated truss structure to the station. The P5 will be attached to the end of the P4 to set the stage for the addition of the P6. Three spacewalks are scheduled during STS-116

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First Published: Dec 12 2006 | 12:00 PM IST

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