Astronaut Piers Sellers, who with Mike Fossum will perform spacewalks during the next space shuttle mission, is available for live satellite interviews from 5 to 7 p.m. EDT Thursday, April 20.
To participate, media should contact the Johnson Space Center newsroom, (281) 483-5111, no later than 1 p.m. EDT Thursday, April 20.
A native of Crowborough, Sussex, in the United Kingdom and a naturalized U.S. citizen, Sellers received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland in 1976. He received a doctorate in biometeorology from Leeds University in the U.K. in 1981.
Selected as an astronaut in 1996, Sellers first flew on the Shuttle Atlantis in October 2002. During that mission, designated STS-112, Sellers conducted three spacewalks to help assemble the International Space Station. He has spent 252 hours in space, including 20 hours working outside the spacecraft.
Sellers will fly aboard Discovery on mission STS-121, the second in the sequence of flights to test shuttle safety improvements and return the fleet to space. The flight, targeted for launch no earlier than July, will travel to the space station and continue an evaluation of flight safety procedures, including shuttle inspection and repair techniques.
Along with Fossum, Sellers will fly with Commander Steve Lindsey, Pilot Mark Kelly and mission specialists Stephanie Wilson and Lisa Nowak. European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter will launch on Discovery, but will remain on the station for several months. For biographical information on NASA astronauts, visit:
The interviews will be carried live on the NASA TV analog satellite. The coordinates are: satellite AMC-6, at 72 degrees west longitude, transponder 5C, 3800 MHz, vertical polarization, with audio at 6.8 MHz.
