Thursday, April 01, 2010

Discovery astronauts arrive at KSC

The seven-member crew preparing to launch aboard the shuttle Discovery arrived at Kennedy Space Center this morning.

The four men and three women arrived on a flight from Houston shortly before 7 a.m. They got a view of Discovery when the Gulfstream they were in did a fly-by of pad 39A.


Their next flight, aboard the shuttle, is scheduled for 6:21 a.m. Monday.
It's the first of four remaining station outfitting missions before the shuttle fleet's scheduled retirement in September.

It's also likely to be the final launch that will blast off into a dark sky.

The 13-day mission will deliver science racks and supplies and equipment to the International Space Station.

"It's hard to believe it's over a year now we've been preparing for this mission," Pilot James Dutton said. "It's great to be here, just four days out from launch."

The crew is adjusting its sleep scheduled to prepare for the mission's overnight work hours. Yesterday the crew woke up at 6 p.m. and did some launch simulations before preparing for their flight to Florida.

Launch managers plan to hold the first countdown status briefing at 10 a.m. this morning. They're expected to provide the first official weather forecasts for Sunday evening fueling operations and Monday's 10-minute launch window.

Check back later for details from the briefing.

You can also watch it live here by clicking on the NASA TV box at right to launch a video player.

About the photo: STS-131 Discovery crew arrives at Kennedy Space Center early Thursday. Photo by Mike Brown.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

WHAT A JOKE AND A WASTE OF MONEY...AND HALF ARE WOMEN...WHAT A BUNCH OF BS

Anonymous said...

So glad to see the US still has the ability to look ahead and continue to explore and gather scientific knowledge. I'll miss the shuttle program when it's retired. (Oh...and considering more than half the population is now female, and more than 50% of college students in many disciplines are female, the fact that 3 out of 7 of the crew are female isn't surprising and in fact is a non-issue.)