NASA plans to add time, spacewalks to Discovery's final mission

NASA plans to extend Discovery's next and final scheduled flight by three days, and to add two spacewalks.

The mission labeled STS-133, once scheduled to be the shuttle program's last, was originally planned to fly for eight days and include no spacewalks.

But Endeavour is now expected to fly the final mission, likely early next year, because of delays to the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer payload.

Discovery, officially targeted to launch Sept. 16, is expected to fly in October.

The new order prompted managers to review the goals for Discovery's mission, which will deliver and leave behind an Italian-built cargo module on the International Space Station. The mission's content was discussed during a program meeting today, but the changes aren't official yet [note: corrected from earlier version].

The spacewalks would accomplish a variety of tasks outside the station. They'd be performed by mission specialist Tim Kopra, an Army colonel and veteran of one spacewalk, and mission specialist Alvin Drew, an Air Force colonel.

The veteran six-person crew is led by retired Air Force Col. Steve Lindsey and also includes pilot Eric Boe (another Air Force colonel) and mission specialists Nicole Stott and Dr. Michael Barratt.

All of the crew members have flown in space before.

Stott is a former Kennedy Space Center shuttle engineer with degrees from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and the University of Central Florida.

IMAGE: NASA astronauts Alvin Drew, attired in a training version of his Extravehicular Mobility Unit spacesuit, and Nicole Stott, both STS-133 mission specialists, take a moment for a photo prior to the start of Drew's March 31 spacewalk training session in the waters of the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory near NASA's Johnson Space Center.