HOUSTON - NASA Television will provide live coverage of the arrival of a new shipment of food, fuel, supplies and holiday gifts to the International Space Station on the morning after Christmas.

Expedition 16 Commander Peggy Whitson and flight engineers Yuri Malenchenko and Dan Tani will be standing by as the unpiloted ISS Progress 27 resupply craft automatically docks to the station's Pirs Docking Compartment on Wednesday, Dec. 26, at about 2:25 a.m. CST. NASA TV coverage of the new spacecraft's arrival at the station will begin at 2 a.m.

The cargo ship is carrying more than 2 tons of supplies for the three crew members. It will be launched on Sunday, Dec. 23, at 1:12 a.m., from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. There will be no television coverage of the launch.

NASA TV is carried on an MPEG-2 digital signal accessed via satellite AMC-6, at 72 degrees west longitude, transponder 17C, 4040 MHz, vertical polarization. For those in Alaska or Hawaii, NASA Television will be seen on AMC-7, at 137 degrees west longitude, transponder 18C, at 4060 MHz, horizontal polarization. In both instances, a Digital Video Broadcast (DVB)-compliant Integrated Receiver Decoder with modulation of QPSK/DBV, data rate of 36.86 and FEC 3/4 will be needed for reception. The NASA Television schedule is available on the NASA Television website, at:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about the space station and the Expedition 16 crew, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station