The Discovery shuttle lifts off July 1 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a nearly two-week mission to the International Space Station and the first flight of the orbiter in 2006.
Here are the mission details:
– Scheduled launch: Saturday at 3:49 p.m. Eastern Time, from Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy. The shuttle's launch window to rendezvous with the station currently runs from July 1 to July 19.
– Scheduled mission length: 11 days, 19 hours and 12 minutes.
– Scheduled landing: Thursday, July 13, at 11:01 a.m. Eastern Time, at the Kennedy Space Center's landing strip. In case of bad weather conditions, landing sites at Edwards Air Force Base in California or at White Sands, N.M., also are available.
– Emergency landing locations in case of problems at launch: Zaragoza or Moron, Spain, or Istres, France.
– Weight: 121 tons at liftoff with payload, and at landing, 102 tons.
– Altitude when reaching ISS: 343 kilometers (226 miles).
– Mission goals: Test new equipment and procedures to increase shuttle safety. Bring supplies and equipment to the ISS and performance maintenance on it.
– Spacewalks: Two 6.5-hour walks on the mission's fifth and seventh days. NASA also is considering a third spacewalk that would extend mission by a day.
– Payload: The Italian space agency's Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Leonardo, which contains food, water and clothes. Leonardo also carries the Minus Eighty Degree Laboratory Freezer (MELFI) to preserve science samples and the European Modular Cultivation to conduct biological experiments in space. The shuttle payload also includes a new oxygen-generating system.
– New ISS crewmember: ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter of Germany, who will join commander Pavel Vinogradov of Russia and NASA flight engineer Jeff Williams.
– Crew members: Commander Steve Lindsey and co-pilot Mark Kelly. Mission specialists include Mike Fossum, Lisa Nowak, Stephanie Wilson and Piers Sellers. Reiter is the only non-American crew member.
Source: Agence France-Presse
