The crew of the space shuttle Discovery successfully completed
a dress rehearsal today for their upcoming launch. They capped off their practice run
at Cape Canaveral with a simulated countdown to liftoff at 11:00 a.m. EDT.
The seven STS-124
astronauts are scheduled to launch May 31 at 5:02 p.m. EDT to deliver the International
Space Station's largest room, the 32,500-pound Japanese Kibo Laboratory. Crewmembers
are slated to perform three spacewalks during their planned 13-day mission.
"This is a big moment in our training to actually go
through a real terminal countdown," Discovery's commander Mark Kelly told
reporters Thursday. "In this case it's a test, but we do everything that
we'd do on launch day."
The crew began to don their orange launch and re-entry spacesuits
at Kennedy Space Center (KSC)'s launch pad
39A around 8:15 a.m. EDT this morning.
They climbed into the orbiter and ran through the launch
procedures that will take place during the real event, short of fueling up and
actually taking off.
The crewmembers, including shuttle pilot Ken Ham, mission
specialists Karen Nyberg, Mike Fossum, Ron Garan, Greg Chamitoff and Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, arrived at KSC
on Tuesday.
Yesterday, the astronauts practiced the escape
procedures they would use if they had to evacuate the shuttle in the case of an emergency. They rehearsed climbing into and out of the baskets that
would zip them quickly away from the launch pad (though they did not actually
ride them down, because NASA administrators deem this too much of an unnecessary
risk).
Today's practice countdown was the last scheduled training
exercise at Cape Canaveral until the STS 124 flight. Later at 2:00 p.m. EDT the astronauts will head back to Houston to resume preparing for
the mission. They plan to arrive back in Florida on May 28.
"We're excited to be here," Kelly said Thursday.
"We look forward to getting back in about three weeks from now."
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