The seven
shuttle astronauts preparing to rocket toward the International Space Station
(ISS) with a new Japanese laboratory this month arrived at NASA's Florida
spaceport Tuesday for launch day practice.
Commanded
by veteran NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, the astronauts are gearing up for a planned
May 31 launch aboard the space shuttle Discovery to deliver Japan's tour
bus-sized Kibo module, the largest room built for the station.
"Discovery
looks really good from what we can see," Kelly said after flying over the
shuttle's seaside launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Cape
Canaveral, Fla. "It's great to see the vehicle at the pad."
NASA hauled
Discovery to its Pad 39A launch site at KSC early Saturday as engineers prepare
the spacecraft for a 13-day mission to the space station.
Kelly and
his crewmates arrived at the launch site today by 4:12 p.m. EDT (2012 GMT),
swooping down in NASA's T-38 jets for a traditional three-day training exercise
that precedes every shuttle mission. The session is dubbed the Terminal
Countdown Demonstration Test.
Training
alongside Kelly are shuttle pilot Ken Ham and mission specialists Karen Nyberg,
Mike Fossum, Ron Garan, Greg Chamitoff and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide,
who is representing the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) that built
the Kibo lab.
"We just
need to have this same weather when we launch on the 31st of May," Garan said
from the sunny tarmac.
Over the
next few days, the astronauts will try on their bright orange launch and entry
pressure suits, inspect the 37-foot-long (11-meter) Kibo module inside
Discovery's cargo hold and speak with reporters from their Pad 39A before
capping the trip with a launch day dress rehearsal and emergency
escape drill.
"I'm
looking forward to seeing the Kibo module in the payload bay," Hoshide told
reporters.
Discovery's
STS-124 mission will mark NASA's third shuttle flight of the year dedicated to
hauling a new room to the space station, with Kibo's main module following a smaller
storage room and Europe's new
Columbus lab. Five of the shuttle's seven astronauts are making the first
spaceflight of their careers with the mission.
"As we
were flying over here, I'm looking at the two [launch] pads and I don't know
which one the orbiter's on," joked Ham, a U.S. Navy commander who chalked it up
to his rookie status, though the word "rookie" has been off limits during
training. "So I flew right between them until I found it."
"I have to admit that I did the same thing," said Garan, who is also making his
first spaceflight, with a smile. "But we found it."
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