Mission type ISS Expedition | ||
 | ||
Space Station International Space Station Began 11 March 2015 (2015-03-11Z) UTC Ended 11 June 2015 (2015-06-12Z) UTC Arrived aboard Soyuz TMA-15M
Soyuz TMA-16M Departed aboard Soyuz TMA-15M
Soyuz TMA-16M
Soyuz TMA-18M | ||
Expedition 43 was the 43rd expedition to the International Space Station. It commenced on 11 March 2015 with the undocking of Soyuz TMA-14M, returning the crew of Expedition 42 to Earth and ended with the departure of Soyuz TMA-15M on 11 June 2015.
The Expedition 43 spend an extra four weeks due to a delay caused by a re-supply spacecraft issue, and the extra time was called a "bonus month" by the crew. On June 8, 2015 ISS adjusted its orbit to allow a bigger distance to a piece of orbital space debris.
This expedition also used the ISSpresso machine and tested a special cup designed to be drunk from in microgravity by using capillary flow. This was a further development of a zero gravity cup invented by Canadian astronautDonald Pettit and tested on ISS in 2008. The new zero g coffee cup idea was further developed by a Fluid physicist at Portland State University among others.
Crew
Yury Lonchakov was originally supposed to be the Flight Engineer 3. However, he resigned from the Russian Federal Space Agency on September 6, 2013, to take a position at Gazprom. He was also originally supposed to be the commander of Expedition 44.