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ONEONTA, N.Y. -- Students at the SUNY College at Oneonta will speak
with NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, who is nearing the conclusion of a
six-month mission as commander of Expedition 18 aboard the International
Space Station (ISS), through a videoconference from the Craven Lounge of the
Morris Conference Center from 3:30 to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, March 31. Admission
to the event is complimentary, and members of the community are invited to
attend.
Commander Fincke was transported to the Space Station on a Russian
spacecraft in October 2008 and is scheduled to return to Earth on April 7.
This is his second mission aboard the station. He served previously as a
science officer and flight engineer on Expedition 9 from April to October of
2004. Fincke also served as the back-up commander for ISS Expeditions 13 and
16.
Colonel Fincke graduated from MIT in 1989 and studied cosmonautics in a
summer exchange program with the Moscow Aviation Institute. After earning
his master's in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University in
1990, he entered the United States Air Force, eventually being assigned to
the Air Force Space and Missiles Systems Center in Los Angeles as a space
systems engineer and a space test engineer. Following experience as an Air
Force flight test engineer, he was selected by NASA in 1996.
With NASA, Fincke has also served as an International Space Station
spacecraft communicator, member of the crew test support team, and crew
procedures team lead. He was a back-up crew member for ISS Expedition 4 and
6.
More information about the SUNY Oneonta videoconference with Commander
Fincke is available from Dr.
Kamala Mahanta of the SUNY Oneonta
Physics and Astronomy
Department at (607) 436-3342.
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