Expedition 34

Occurred 11 years ago

Understanding how weightlessness affects bone density and 3D visual perception were key life science studies during Expedition 34. Fluids containing particles that respond to magnetic fields were observed with the potential to strengthen building materials. External station hardware measured how the sun's electromagnetic radiation affects Earth's climate.

Mission Type

ISS Expedition

meet the crew

Kevin Ford, Roman Romanenko, Oleg Novitskiy, Chris Hadfield, Evgeny Tarelkin, Thomas Marshburn

Launch

Oct. 23, 2012

Landing

March 15, 2013

Expedition 34 Official Crew Portrait — Expedition 34 crew members take a break from training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center to pose for a crew portrait. Pictured on the front row are NASA astronaut Kevin Ford (left), commander; and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield, flight engineer. Pictured from the left (back row) are Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy, Evgeny Tarelkin, Roman Romanenko and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn, all flight engineers.
NASA

Expedition 34 Official Crew Insignia — The official insignia of the Expedition 34 mission aboard the International Space Station.
NASA

Crew Members

Kevin Ford, Commander
Roman Romanenko, Flight Engineer
Oleg Novitskiy, Flight Engineer
Chris Hadfield, Flight Engineer
Evgeny Tarelkin, Flight Engineer
Tom Marshburn, Flight Engineer

Mission Overview

3/15/13 – Expedition 33/34 Land
3/3/13 – SpaceX CRS-2 Capture
3/1/13 – SpaceX CRS-2 Launch
2/11/13 – ISS Progress 50 Launch/Dock
2/9/13 – ISS Progress 48 Undock
12/21/12 – Expedition 34/35 Dock
12/19/12 – Expedition 34/35 Launch

Expedition 34 Resources

News Releases

The news releases for Expedition 34 covering a variety of mission events and other activities both on Earth and in space.

Earth's Moon, Venus, Jupiter and the crescent of Earth at the top.

Expedition Press Kit

Get an overview of the Expedition, its crew and the activities they are working on during this mission to the International Space Station.

The sun's first rays burst over the Earth's horizon

Mission Summary

Explore hands-on activities, interactive, lesson plans, educator guides, and other downloadable content about this topic.

The Solid Fuel Ignition and Extinction (SoFIE) Growth and Extinction Limits (GEL) experiment aboard the International Space Station (ISS) studies flame growth and extinction in an effort to improve fire safety in space. This image shows a sequence of snapshots taken about 3 seconds apart. During this test point, the ambient oxygen concentration starts relatively high (28%). Initially, the flame is seen as yellow and sooty. As the ambient pressure is reduced, the flame becomes bluer and continues to shrink until fully extinguished. This gives researchers pressure limit data points for flame extinction that could help improve crew and spacecraft safety for future exploration missions.

Mission Science

Explore hands-on activities, interactive, lesson plans, educator guides, and other downloadable content about this topic.

One of the Expedition 41 crew members aboard the International Space Station, flying at an altitude of 222 nautical miles above a point in the Atlantic Ocean several hundred miles off the coast of Africa near the Tropic of Cancer, photographed this eye-catching panorama of the night sky and the Milky Way on Sept. 27. NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, flight engineer, tweeted the image, which was taken with an electronic still camera, set with a 24mm focal length. In his accompanying comments, Wiseman stated, "Sahara sands make the Earth glow orange."

Mission Imagery

During Expedition 34, the crew took images of the Earth views, the orbiting station, their daily lives aboard and the experiments they conducted during their stay, plus so much more. Check out some of the image highlights from Expedition 34 in the gallery.