With them was astronaut Sandra Magnus, who joined the Expedition 18 crew after launching on STS-126 and remained until departing on STS-119 on 25 March 2009.

Salizhan Sharipov was originally slated to be the Soyuz commander and Expedition 18 Flight Engineer 1, but was replaced by his back-up, Yuri Lonchakov.

On 12 March 2009, a piece of debris from the upper stage of a Delta II rocket used to launch a GPS satellite in 1993, passed close to the ISS.

The conjunction between the debris and the Space Station was not detected until it was too late to perform a collision avoidance manoeuvre.

[3] The debris did not hit the station, instead it passed by at 16:38 UTC, and the crew were cleared to resume operations about five minutes later.