CAPE
CANAVERAL, Fla. - The astronaut crew of NASA's next shuttle
mission arrived here at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) late Sunday, flying
in aboard white and blue T-38 training jets.
The seven-member
STS-116 crew was greeted by veteran astronaut Jerry Ross and Mike Leinbach, NASA's
launch director for the upcoming space shot. The astronauts' family members
also welcomed their Florida spaceport arrival.
"It
was a beautiful flight out...I'm very, very excited to be here," the
mission's shuttle pilot, William
Oefelein, said at NASA's KSC Shuttle Landing Facility. "We seven
certainly are very ready to go and we're looking forward to executing a great
mission."
The
astronauts are slated
to launch aboard NASA's shuttle
Discovery on a 12-day construction flight the International Space
Station (ISS) on Dec. 7 at 9:35:47 p.m. EST (0235:47 GMT). The planned
liftoff will mark NASA's third shuttle mission this year and the agency's first
night launch since 2002.
"We're
going to go ahead and hopefully have one heck of a night show to give everybody
this Thursday night," Discovery's STS-116 commander Mark
Polansky said.
The mission
will include the delivery of a new
portside piece of the ISS and a trio of spacewalks to rewire
the outpost's power grid. It will also include the swap
of Expedition
14 crewmember Sunita
Williams for European Space Agency astronaut Thomas
Reiter, who is finishing up a nearly six-month stint aboard the orbital
laboratory.
"I'm
just really happy to be here. It's been a long time coming," Williams said,
adding that she's spoken with her Expedition 14 crewmate-to-be Mikhail
"Misha" Tyurin. "Misha Tyurin called the other day and said 'Suni,
we're waiting for you!', so I just can't wait to get to my new home."
STS-116 mission
specialists and multilingual crewmembers Nicholas
Patrick and Christer
Fuglesang--Sweden's first astronaut to fly--added a few words in Spanish and
Swedish, respectively.
Not to be
outdone, Alaskan native Oefelein added a few words in his state's official
language: English. "I'll start by saying a few words in Alaskan--It's warm
out here," he said.
Mission specialist Robert
Curbeam turned the attention away from his fellow astronauts.
"This
is a tribute to the guys that got our vehicle ready, to get all of us ready as
well, for our 12 day trip and Suni's six month trip," Curbeam said.
"We appreciate it and thank all of them...Also thanks to our family and
friends and coaches and relatives for all the years of motivating us to do our
best. We hope to make all those people who helped get us here proud."
For mission
specialist Joan
Higginbotham, the flight to KSC was a return home of sorts.
"I'm
very happy to be here...I actually began my career here at Kennedy Space Center," she said. "To finally come back as an astronaut and get to work and fly on
the vehicle that I used to work on is absolutely beyond words.
"When
I got out the plane, Mike said to me 'That's a megawatt smile,' and that's how
I feel," Higginbotham added. "I'm not going to wipe this grin off my
face until December 19 when we land and I'm sure you'll still have a hard time
wiping it off my face."
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