It's official, the crew of the upcoming Expedition 18 participated in a flag raising ceremony near the Cosmonaut Hotel at the Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan. Photo at right shows spaceflight participant Richard Garriott (left), along with cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov (center), Expedition 18 flight engineer; and astronaut Michael Fincke, Expedition 18 commander.

Commander Edward Michael "Mike" Fincke and Flight Engineer Yury Valentinovich Lonchakov of the 18th International Space Station crew are scheduled to launch in their Soyuz TMA-13 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan about 3 a.m. EDT Sunday to begin a six-month stay in space. With Fincke, an Air Force colonel, and Lonchakov, a colonel in the Russian Air Force, will be spaceflight participant Richard Garriott, flying under contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency.

Garriott will return to Earth with Expedition 17 crew members, Commander Sergei Volkov and Flight Engineer Oleg Kononenko, in their Soyuz TMA-12 on October 23. Expedition 17 launched to the station April 8.

The Expedition 18 crew members will be welcomed by the Expedition 17 crew, including astronaut Gregory E. Chamitoff, after their docking to the orbiting laboratory, scheduled for Tuesday. Chamitoff launched to the station on the STS-124 mission of Discovery on May 31. He joined Expedition 17 in progress and will provide Expedition 18 with an experienced flight engineer for the first part of its increment.

Fincke, 41, is making his second long-duration flight on the station. He is a graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and holds master's degrees from Stanford University and the University of Houston, Clear Lake. He served as an Air Force flight test engineer, and was selected by NASA in 1996. He was commander of the second NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO 2), working seven days on the seafloor off Florida in May 2002. He served as a flight engineer on station Expedition 9 from April to October 2004.

Left photo from the left, spaceflight participant Richard Garriott, along with cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov, Expedition 18 flight engineer, and astronaut Michael Fincke, Expedition 18 commander, walk to the Soyuz TMA-13 capsule for their suited fit check at the integration facility of the Baikonur launch complex in Kazakhstan. The fit check was part of a busy agenda for the trio leading up to a scheduled October 12 launch aboard the Soyuz. Photo Credit: NASA/Victor Zelentsov

Lonchakov, 43, is a graduate of the Orenburg Air Force Pilot School and the Zhukovski Air Force Academy. He is a class 1 Air Force pilot with more than 1,400 hours of flight time as well as a paratroop training instructor with 526 jumps. He was selected as a test cosmonaut candidate in late 1997 having flown two previous space missions, STS-100 to the station in April 2001, and a Soyuz delivery flight to the station in October and November 2002.

Astronaut Sandra H. Magnus is scheduled to fly to the station on STS-126 to replace Chamitoff as a flight engineer on E18. Magnus, 43, will be replaced near the end of Expedition 18 by Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, who will launch on Discovery on the STS-119 mission. Magnus holds bachelor's and master's degrees in physics from the University of Missouri-Rolla and a Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology. She was selected as an astronaut in 1996 and will be making her second spaceflight. She flew as a mission specialist on STS-112 in October 2002.