New Commander on the Space Station

Command of the International Space Station was passed from cosmonaut Oleg Kotov to Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on March 9. The change of command makes Wakata, who will oversee Expedition 39, the first Japanese commander of the complex. He, NASA Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin will be joined on March 26 by NASA's Steve Swanson and cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev and Oleg Artemyev.