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Space Station Crew Chats With FC Barcelona Soccer Team

The International Space Station crew will take a special call at 4:10 p.m. EDT, Tuesday, Aug. 8, from members of the European champion soccer team, FC Barcelona. During a visit to NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, the team will stop in Mission Control to make the call. NASA TV will broadcast the event live.

The FC Barcelona team will be in Houston to play an Aug. 9 exhibition game against Club America, one of Mexico's top club teams. Players, coaches and guests of the team will visit mission control rooms used for the station and shuttle, and the historic control room used during Apollo missions and lunar landings. They will also visit training facilities including full-scale mockups of the station and shuttle. The private tour of Johnson Space Center is not open to the public. Media coverage of the visit is only by pool. Media should call the Johnson news room for details.

The space station is home to NASA astronaut Jeff Williams, Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter. Each crew member is spending approximately six months onboard the station.

For links to streaming video, digital downlink and NASA TV information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

Source: NASA