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Pat Duggins
Pat Duggins
Senior News Analyst
pduggins@wmfe.org


 

April 27, 2007—NASA has decided to bring Astronaut Sunita Williams back down from the International Space Station early. The Space Agency has had to learn to be flexible, like never before, during the era of the Space Station. That means shuffling both Shuttles and crewmembers. Williams was supposed to come home aboard Shuttle Endeavour in June. Hail-damaged Atlantis was supposed to fly first, and repairs to that Shuttle pushed Endeavour’s launch until August at the earliest. NASA doesn’t want to keep Williams orbiting the Earth that long, so her travel plans changed. Williams’ replacement, Astronaut Clayton Anderson will join the six crewmembers on Atlantis’ planned June flight. That way Anderson can move aboard the station and Williams can depart ahead of schedule.

Think switching out one Astronaut is a lot—how about three? When NASA assigned a crew to fly mission STS-101 in the year 2000, the crew originally included two Astronauts and a Cosmonaut trained to work aboard the Russian built Zvezda crew module on the Station. Launch delays in Russia meant Zvezda wouldn’t be attached to the station when the STS-101 crew arrived. NASA chose to boot the three crewmembers, who trained on Zvezda, off this flight to a later mission and replace them with three other people.

 

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