NASA announced a quartet of spaceflyers to serve as the 15th crew of the International Space Station (ISS) next year.Veteran Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin will command Expedition 15 with flight engineer – and fellow cosmonaut – Oleg Kotov serving as Soyuz commander for the March 2007 launch towards the ISS.

Yurchikhin and Kotov expect to join NASA astronaut Sunita Williams aboard the ISS when they arrive next spring. Williams is currently scheduled to launch towards the station aboard NASA’s Discovery space shuttle in December and join the outpost’s current crew, Expedition 14, then stay on for part of Expedition 15.

Later in the Expedition 15 mission, NASA astronaut Clayton Anderson  [image] is expected to relieve Williams during the ISS-bound shuttle flight STS-118 in June 2007. Anderson, in turn, will return to Earth during the STS-120 mission slated to launch in August 2007 with his replacement: NASA astronaut Daniel Tani [video].

Complicated crew rotation aside, the Expedition 15 assignments seem to have a good mix of experience and new space faces. Yurchikhin is no ISS stranger, having flown to the orbital lab during NASA’s STS-112 mission in 2002. Kotov was assigned to planned April 2003 Soyuz taxi flight to the ISS that was delayed due to NASA’s Columbia accident.

Like Kotov, Anderson will make his first spaceflight during STS-118 and Expedition 15 but Tani has already flown to the ISS once during the STS-108 mission in December 2001.