A guy I used to know (the one in the middle) is going up on the Shuttle!
From Dr. H, the head of our undergrad program:
It’s great when a dream becomes reality! Garrett Reisman (M&T ‘91) is about to realize the dream which he has pursued since his senior year at Penn -a mission into space as a NASA astronaut. As some of you are aware, Garrett is carrying a special M&T emblem on the mission which was created by current students and will return to campus sometime in the next academic year to present it to us. If you are interested in following Garrett’s space adventure NASA TV will be providing coverage at their website: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
For those of you interested in more detail, here is a brief excerpt from one of Garrett’s emails describing mission STS-123:
“The plan is for me to launch on the Space Shuttle out of Florida. We will be bringing up to the Space Station the first part of the Japanese Laboratory Module and a new Canadian Robot. You can find out more about this mission here:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts123/index.html
Once our work is done, my crewmates will leave me behind on the Station as they return to Earth. I will stay there for a total of about 6 months. During that time, there is a lot going on. Another Shuttle will come and deliver the rest of the Japanese Laboratory and after the Shuttle leaves, it will be my job to get the new lab up and running. During the 123 mission I will be doing a spacewalk with a good friend, Rick Linnehan.
The Space Station has a crew complement of three and at first my two crewmates will be an American, Peggy Whitson (who was my commander on NEEMO V - that time I lived under the sea for a few weeks) and a Russian, Yuri Malenchenko. After about three months, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft will come up to take Peggy and Yuri home and drop off my two new Russian crewmates: Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko. Finally I will come home on a third Space Shuttle flight, STS-119 (15A) which will be bringing up the final set of solar arrays and my replacement, Sandy Magnus.”
I know that you will join me in wishing Garrett a safe and productive mission. And we’ll all look forward to celebrating his achievement and to hearing about his mission first-hand when Garrett returns to campus.
via www.nasa.gov