Soyuz TMA-2

Soyuz TMA-2 (Russian Союз ТМА-2, Alliance TMA-2) is a Russian spaceflight mission to the International Space Station, the second flight for the TMA modification of the Soyuz spacecraft, and the 6th Soyuz to fly to the ISS.

Commander is Yuri Ivanovich Malenchenko[?] (Russia), and flight engineer Edward Tsang Lu[?] (USA), and after docking with the ISS they will exchange the current crew on ISS and become the seventh station crew, called "ISS Expedition Seven". As backup crew Alexander Kaleri[?] and Michael Foale[?] stand by.

Originally the Soyuz missions to the ISS were all planned to be only taxi mission to deliver a new Soyuz spacecraft as the station's lifeboat every six month with a visiting crew, but not for crew exchange. Until the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster the same was planned for Soyuz TMA-2, a visiting crew consisting of commander Gennadi Padalka[?] and ESA-astronaut Pedro Duque[?] were to spend about one week at the station and then return with the previous Soyuz TMA-1[?] spacecraft. The third seat might have gone to the Chilean Klaus von Storch as a space tourist, but even before the Columbia desaster it looked like his flight would not happen, and the seat would go to a Russian cosmonaut or to deliver freight to the station.