NASA
astronaut Clayton Anderson, a late addition to the agency's next shuttle crew,
is ramping up for a planned June 8 launch towards the International Space Station
(ISS).
Originally assigned
to NASA's STS-118 shuttle flight, which is due to launch in early August,
Anderson moved
to an earlier flight and joined the STS-117 crew last month after mission managers
decided he should relieve Expedition 15 flight engineer Sunita Williams, the station's
current U.S. resident, a few months early.
"It's going
well," Anderson, 48, told SPACE.com of his training. "It's kind of piecemeal because we're trying to figure out parts that
I trained on for STS-118 that I don't need to repeat, and which parts that I do
need to take...on 117."
That
training regimen swings into high gear this week, Anderson said, adding that he
and STS-117 commander Rick Sturckow have been working together to decide which tasks
he must rehearse for the upcoming launch of NASA's space shuttle Atlantis.
Unlike, Anderson's
original shuttle flight -- which will deliver a relatively small spacer piece,
storage platform and a pod full of supplies to the ISS -- NASA's
STS-117 mission is hauling a massive pair of new solar arrays to the
orbital laboratory. The planned 11-day spaceflight was delayed from a March 15 liftoff
due to hail damage to Atlantis' external tank. Mission managers later opted to
add Anderson to the mission in order to assure a return trip
home for Williams, who has lived aboard the ISS since December 2006.
"We kind of
knew it was coming," said Anderson, who will make his first spaceflight with
the STS-117 and Expedition 15 crews. "I'll go whenever they want me to go."
Anderson
said he expects to assist with robotics work using Atlantis' 50-foot (15-meter)
robotic arm to deliver the space station's 17.5-ton Starboard 3/Starboard 4 truss
segment and solar arrays during the STS-117 mission. He also plans to help out
on Atlantis' middeck filling water bags for later transfer to the ISS alongside
other cargo.
The
spaceflight comes after more than two decades of NASA service by Anderson, who
first began work for the space agency as an intern before securing a full-time position
with the Mission Planning and Analysis Division at the Johnson Space Center in
Houston, Texas in 1983.
"The most
challenging part is just simply adapting to a new crew and they way they
interact with each other," Anderson said of his mission switch.
Launching in
June did add some scheduling challenges for Anderson's wife Susan and other family
members and friends, who plan to travel to Florida for the space shot, though
it does make it easier for his two children to attend the planned liftoff.
"We don't
have to worry about taking them out of school...or disrupting to the start of their next year
of school to go to a launch event," Anderson said of his son Cole and daughter
Sutton Marie.
Some of
Anderson's supplies are either already aboard the ISS or arriving early Tuesday
aboard the unmanned
Progress 25 cargo ship, Anderson said, adding that his Russian-built Sokol
spacesuit and Soyuz seat liner will ride into space aboard Atlantis. Only a
small number of items will have to wait for the STS-118 launch later this
summer, he added.
Anderson
plans to spend about five months in orbit, and is slated to be relieved in late October
by fellow NASA astronaut Daniel Tani during the STS-120
mission to the ISS.
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