NASA astronauts Tom Jones, Robert Curbeam and Marsha Ivins are scheduled to thunder aloft in shuttle Atlantis Wednesday on a mission to deliver the $1.38 billion U.S. Destiny laboratory to the International Space Station.

Wielding the shuttle's 50-foot (15-meter) robot arm like a construction crane, Ivins will mount the 16-ton lab atop the station with a spacewalking assist from Jones and Curbeam.

"It'll kind of be an all-Baltimore show there," Curbeam told U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, (D-Maryland), during a specially arranged teleconference from the astronaut's Kennedy Space Center crew quarters Tuesday.

"The main thing in front of us this week is to take the Baltimore name to new heights," added Jones. "The Ravens took us pretty far, but we're going try to take it a little bit farther."

Said Mikulski: "Well don't drop the ball, and don't drop the lab."

Strapped into Atlantis with shuttle commander Ken Cockrell and pilot Mark "Roman" Polansky, the three Baltimoreans are slated to blast off at 6:11 p.m. EST (23:11 GMT) Wednesday, carrying with them roots that run as deep as the city's harbor.

Jones, 46, is a 1973 graduate of Kenwood Senior High in nearby Essex, Maryland. Curbeam, 38, graduated from Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County and later earned a degree in aerospace engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

The 49-year-old Ivins, meanwhile, was born in Baltimore but later moved to Pennsylvania.

The unusual grouping of three clam steamers on a single shuttle crew caught the attention of Mikulski, an ardent supporter of the space program in Congress.

The senatorial seafood lover, however, did take exception with one of the menu items the astronauts will be hauling into space with them: Freeze-dried crab soup.

"Freeze-dried? Freeze-dried?" she asked, chiding the astronauts a bit.

"Yeah, we have to make certain allowances, senator, for the fact that we don't have a refrigerator aboard, so we got some Baltimore-made crab soup and the NASA food lab in Houston tested it and freeze-dried it for us," Jones said.

"So we're all going to share some of that in a couple of days up there."

Mikulski and the astronauts also took time to chat about the Destiny lab and the types of scientific research it will enable.

But the conversation inevitably worked its way back to the Ravens' Super Bowl victory -- still a sore subject with shuttle pilot Polansky, who is a New Jersey native.

"Unfortunately, Roman is a Giants fan," Curbeam said. "But he's taking all of this pretty well."