The astronauts of Space Shuttle Discovery?s STS-116 mission will share their 13-day, 5.3 million-mile journey in space during a presentation at Space Center Houston?s Northrop Grumman Theater at 6:30 p.m. CST Monday, Jan. 22.
The event is free and will include an awards presentation, crew presentation with slides and video and a question-and-answer session. Doors open at 6 p.m. Seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Once the 580-seat theater fills, guests will be seated in an adjacent area to watch the program on closed-circuit television. The event is open to JSC employees, contractors, friends, family members and public guests.
Discovery Commander Mark Polansky, Pilot Bill Oefelein and mission specialists Nicholas Patrick, Bob Curbeam, Joan Higginbotham, Thomas Reiter and Christer Fuglesang landed Friday, Dec. 22, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla., at 4:32 p.m. CST.
STS-116 was the second in a series of missions that are among the most complex in space history. Discovery’s crew rewired the station’s power system and delivered a key component of the station’s structure. The segment will enable future missions to attach a new set of solar arrays.
Curbeam, Fuglesang and Williams, with the help of crewmates, made four spacewalks that completed the construction tasks, reconfigured power and cooling systems and retracted a snagged solar array.
The newest resident of the International Space Station also traveled aboard Discovery. Astronaut Sunita Williams remained aboard the station to join the crew of Expedition 14. She is scheduled to spend six months on the station.
For more information on the STS-116 mission and the upcoming STS-117 mission, visit: www.nasa.gov/shuttle
