LIVE IMAGES: Refresh this page to see the latest still images from live video feeds in the Launch Complex 39 area at Kennedy Space Center.
Discovery's astronauts boarded their spaceship at Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39A today as NASA stepped through a practice countdown for the planned April 5 launch of the first of only four remaining International Space Station assembly-and-outfitting missions before shuttle fleet retirement late this year.

With 150 to 200 engineers staffing Firing Room 4 of the Launch Control Center, the astronauts and the launch team are marching through all the same countdown preparations they will do on April 5, with one notable exception: the shuttle's 15-story external tank is not fueled with more than a half-million-gallons of supercold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.

Dutton, Metcalf-Lindenburger and Yamazaki all will be making their first flight into space. Wilson is a veteran shuttle robot arm operator. Mastracchio is a veteran spacewalker and Anderson served a long-duration tour on the station his first flight.
Bit of trivia: Anderson is the only astronaut ever to read down from space the names of every town and hamlet in his home state of Nebraska.
Another:The commander's father, John Poindexter, was National Security Advisor in the Reagan Administration. First in his class in the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958, John Poindexter graduated with former astronaut Bruce McCandless. McCandless is the subject in one of the most iconic pictures in the 30-year history of the shuttle program, the astronaut flying the Manned Maneuvering Unit against the blackness of space.

The astronauts then will perform an emergency drill. They'll practice a rapid egress from the vehicle, cross the Orbiter Access Arm on the 195-foot level of the launch tower and then climb into the metal baskets that would whisk them down a 1,200-foot slide-wire in an emergency.
They will not, however, hit the metal bar that would send their baskets scooting down the slidewire at a top speed of about 55 mph to an emergency bunker on the western perimeter of the pad area.
The Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test is the last major training exercise at KSC for shuttle crews prior to launch. The Discovery astronauts will head back to Johnson Space Center in Houston later today.

2 comments:
Our astronauts are some of the bravest people alive. God love and keep you all safe.
They are the pros who do the best. Don't leave our national security in the hands of amateurs. God Bless you astronauts and Shuttle team!!
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