the Mission

One if the biggest things we've done since we've been offline is work the last Space Shuttle Mission.

The mission, called Space Transportation System -121 (STS-121) and/or Utility and Logistics Flight 1.1 (ULF1.1), was the first mission that Melissa worked as a certified flight controller here in the Mission Control Center in Houston. (She worked the mission last summer from the Mission Control Center in Moscow).

Here's a great shot of Melissa at her console during the mission.

This mission also marked the first mission that I (Rob) was the lead instructor for my discipline. All of my work happened before the crew launched so all I had to do during the actual mission was sit back and watch my handywork, (and pray the crew didn't screw up or it was my fault!). At the crew debrief this week, both Astronauts I trained to do the tasks my group is responsible for told me the lesson flow was excellent and that I did a great job. It's always good to hear them say that (especially when your division chief is in the room!). Basically the goal of the mission was to prove that the updates we've done to the Shuttle vehicles are good enough to safely fly again and also to resupply the International Space Station (ISS).

Here's a cool shot of the whole crew while they were abord the ISS. The two upside-down gentlemen on the left in this picture, Piers Sellers and Mike Fossum were the crew members that training to operate the system that connects the temporary cargo module to the ISS.

In this beautiful picture of Discovery taken by the ISS crew as she was flying in for docking, you can see the temporary module in the aft of the payload bay. The module is called a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module, or MPLM.