The six astronauts who will fly the space shuttle Discovery on its final mission to the International Space Station arrived at NASA’s Florida spaceport today (Feb. 20), four days ahead of their historic launch.
The crewmembers all touched down here at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center by about 3:45 p.m. EST (2045 GMT).
Shuttle commander Steve Lindsey, pilot Eric Boe and mission specialists Michael Barratt, Alvin Drew, Nicole Stott and Steve Bowen flew into Florida on supersonic T-38 jets from the agency’s training headquarters at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
NASA administrator Charles Bolden was on hand to greet the astronauts upon their arrival.
“We’re back here for another attempt at this,” Lindsey told reporters who had gathered for the crew’s arrival. “We’re pretty confident about this one. The external tank problem we’ve been working for the last several months is probably the most difficult, technical challenge we’ve faced in recent years. The team did a great job of coming together, figuring out a very difficult engineering problem, and coming up with a solution that I think gives us a really good tank to go launch with this week.”
Lindsey also spoke about the challenges that have been faced on the crew side – mission specialist Steve Bowen was selected by NASA less than six weeks ago to replace Tim Kopra, who was injured in a bike accident on Jan. 15. (more…)