WASHINGTON -- NASA's next shuttle astronauts to fly, a
blend of veteran spaceflyers and rookies, are in the final month of training for
a March construction flight to the International Space
Station (ISS).
Veteran
shuttle flyer Rick Sturckow and his fellow STS-117 crew [image]
of the shuttle Atlantis lauded their spacecraft's launch
pad arrival on Thursday as they prepare to haul two massive trusses and a
pair of new solar wings [image]
to the ISS on March 15.
"I think
the realization is really kind of starting to sink in, and you kind of come to
grips with the fact that this is very soon becoming a reality," STS-117 mission
specialist Danny Olivas told reporters during a preflight briefing. "To see
the bird actually make its way to the pad is an actual awesome sight."
Sturckow,
Olivas and their four STS-117
crewmates are due to launch aboard Atlantis at 6:43 a.m. EDT (1043 GMT) on
March 15 to deliver the new Starboard 3/Starboard 4 truss segments and their
solar arrays to the ISS.
The mission
marks the first spaceflight for Olivas, STS-117 pilot Lee
Archambault and mission specialist Steven
Swanson. Two-time shuttle flyer Sturckow and STS-117 mission specialists Patrick
Forrester and James
Reilly round out Atlantis' veteran astronaut crew.
"We've been
really focused on [training] for about nine months now, pretty much everyday," Sturckow
said.
During
their planned 11-day
mission, the STS-117 astronauts will stage three spacewalks to install the
new starboard trusses, unfurl its two solar arrays, and help retract an older
solar wing reaching to starboard from the space station's mast-like
Port 6 truss.
Spacewalkers
helped tuck
away a stubborn port-reaching Port 6 solar wing during December's STS-116
shuttle flight to the ISS, a mission the current Atlantis astronauts
watched closely.
"We're
going with the things that did work really well for them," said Reilly, who
serves as the lead STS-117 spacewalker, of the STS-116
crew.
NASA
engineers have devised new tools to help Reilly and his fellow spacewalkers --
Olivas, Forrester and Swanson -- to ease difficulties like stuck bolts and
stubborn launch restraints such as those encountered during NASA's STS-115
mission in September
2006, which delivered a portside
set of solar arrays in a near mirror image of the upcoming March
spaceflight.
"Kind of
the theme running through here is that we get to learn from the challenges that
other crews have faced," Forrester said.
Two extra
flight days and a spare spacewalk could be added to the STS-117 mission should
the astronauts run into any unforeseen challenges, mission managers said
Thursday.
As an added
bonus, Forrester and Sturckow -- who flew together during NASA's STS-105
mission to the ISS in 2001 -- are once again teaming up for an orbital
spaceflight.
"For me
personally, it was just a pleasure to be reassigned to fly with him again,"
Forrester said. "What it allowed me to do is know where he was coming from
really from day one in our training."
During the STS-105
mission, Forrester and Sturckow also flew to the ISS with Russian
cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, who was then a member of the orbital laboratory's
Expedition
3 crew. Now, almost six years later, Tyurin is again in Earth orbit serving
as a flight engineer with the space station's Expedition
14 crew, which will host the STS-117 astronauts next month.
"We're
looking forward to seeing him again when we get on orbit," Sturckow said of
Tyurin.
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