Shuttle astronauts at KSC for "big week"

Discovery's astronauts made a sunset arrival Sunday at the Kennedy Space Center, kicking off a week that will feature a practice countdown for the shuttle crew and the launch from Kazakhstan of the first female commander of the International Space Station.

"It's a pretty big week for human spaceflight, and we're excited to be part of it," said Discovery skipper Pam Melroy, who will lead her crew through a full-up dress rehearsal for their planned Oct. 23 launch.

Melroy and her crew will take part in emergency training at launch pad 39A early this week. Then on Wednesday, the astronauts will board Discovery for the final stages of a two-day practice countdown known as the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test, or TCDT.

"This is a wonderful moment," said Melroy, a veteran pilot who will become only the second woman to command a shuttle mission. "We actually get a chance to get close to our vehicle."









Pictured above, the Discovery crew includes Melroy (at the microphone) and (right to left) pilot George Zamka and mission specialists Scott Parazynski, Stephanie Wilson, Douglas Wheelock and Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency. NASA astronaut Dan Tani (far left) will fly up to the station with the crew; current station flight engineer Clay Anderson will return to Earth aboard the shuttle.

Clad in partial-pressure launch-and-entry suits, the crew will be strapping into Discovery about the same time that NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson is scheduled to blast off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Whitson, who will become the first female to serve as station commander, will launch with Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, a Malaysian space tourist.

The practice countdown at KSC is a key milestone in a launch campaign that has included a significant amount of extra work on the shuttle's external tank and landing gear.

"A lot of people have been working extremely hard on Discovery to get it ready to go," Melroy said. "We've had some real challenges in the last few months, and it's a real reflection on the team here at Kennedy Space Center, how they managed to keep us on schedule, which is so incredibly important for all the things that are coming up next."

NASA is facing a presidential deadline of September 2010 to complete station construction. The Discovery astronauts are to deliver the U.S. Harmony module. Built in Italy, the multihatch module will serve as a pressurized passageway to still-to-be-launched European and Japanese science laboratories.

The Discovery mission will set the stage for the launch in December of the European Columbus lab and the launch next year of the Japanese Kibo science research facility.

The shuttle and its astronauts are scheduled to land at KSC at 4:48 a.m. Nov. 6.

NOTE ON IMAGES: Click to enlarge and save the Florida Today photos from the Discovery crew arrival Sunday at Kennedy Space Center. The top shows a NASA T-38 Talon training jet rolling down the runway at sunset. The other shows the Discovery crew talking with reporters on the apron at the south end of the Shuttle Landing Facility. Photo credits: Michael R. Brown/Florida Today.