Connecticut native and NASA astronaut Dan Burbank, set to launch in late August on the Space Shuttle Atlantis to resume construction of the International Space Station, is available for live satellite interviews 7-8 a.m. CDT Aug. 2.
The shuttle mission, designated STS-115, will be Burbank’s second space flight and include his first spacewalk. It marks the beginning of a series of space flights to complete assembly of the station that will be as complex and challenging as any in history.
To participate in the Aug. 2 interviews, media should contact NASA’s Johnson Space Center newsroom at: (281) 483-5111 by 3 p.m. CDT, Monday, July 31. The interviews will be carried live on the NASA TV analog satellite AMC-6, at 72 degrees west longitude; transponder 5C, 3800 MHz, vertical polarization, with audio at 6.8 MHz.
Born in Manchester, Conn., Burbank considers Tolland, Conn., his hometown. He received a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in 1985, and a master’s in aeronautical science from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 1990. Burbank’s first flight was shuttle mission STS-106 in September 2000, a flight that prepared the space station for the arrival of its first resident crew.
Aboard Atlantis, Burbank will help deliver and install a 17-ton segment of the station’s truss backbone that will include giant solar arrays, batteries and electronics. The delivery sets the stage for more science laboratories to be added to the complex. Three spacewalks are planned by two teams. Astronauts Joe Tanner and Heide Stefanyshyan-Piper will perform the first and third spacewalks. Burbank and Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean will conduct the second.
For information about STS-115 on the Web, visit:
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