The unofficial launch date is July 9, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the shuttle in orbit on July 4.
But no one at Nasa could be pushed on when Atlantis, the next shuttle in line, will make its journey into space.
His wife had watched the launch of his mission but missed the landing, so it was great for her to see the shuttle in the air, he added.
Following the retirement of the US space shuttle in 2011, the only way to transfer astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) is aboard the three-seat Russian Soyuz vehicle.
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Dr Patrick's first mission was as the robotic arm operator on STS-116 - a mission of the Discovery shuttle in 2006 to continue the construction of the International Space Station (ISS).
The plan as of now is for the first piece of station hardware, which looks like the central core of Mir, to be launched from Baikonur in June, with the first U.S. piece, called Node 1, to be launched on the shuttle in early July.
Following the retirement of the American space shuttle in July, the Soyuz rocket is the only means of getting astronauts and cosmonauts to the ISS. August's failure saw manned flights stand down even longer than the six weeks for unmanned Soyuz rockets, and the hiatus put a severe strain on the operation of the space station.
In 1988, in the first space mission since the explosion of the shuttle Challenger in January 1986, the shuttle Discovery was launched.
Even the shuttle will live on, in some sense, since the Space Launch System the unromantic name of the beefy rocket needed to loft astronauts and cargoes into high orbits or farther into the solar system will be built partly from recycled shuttle parts in an effort to save money and use familiar technology.
To prove the concept, an early version of AMS spent 10 days in space aboard space shuttle Discovery in 1998.
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Diplomats have been meeting in New York after days of shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East to look for a compromise.
But think about how much time you spent immobile: in a car or cab, in an airplane seat, on a bus or shuttle, in a meeting room or at a restaurant, watching TV in your hotel room.
"We would like to land the shuttle tomorrow in Florida, " said flight director Wayne Hale.
Consider the debates within Morton-Thiokol and NASA the night before the ill-fated Challenger shuttle launch in 1986.
By coincidence, the two performed a spacewalk at this troublesome spot before, during a shuttle visit in 2009.
Endeavour, along with Discovery, Enterprise and Atlantis, became a museum piece after NASA ended its 30-year shuttle program in July 2011.
It was Garan's own experiences on the STS-124 mission of the shuttle Discovery in 2008 that stirred the emotions in him.
Nasa plans seven more shuttle missions to complete construction of the ISS before the scheduled retirement of the shuttle fleet in September 2010.
Due to the transitions in the NASA Space Shuttle program based in Brevard, thousands of aerospace engineers are unemployed and looking for new opportunities.
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On Wednesday, Texas authorities said they found more body parts and an astronaut's patch along with more shuttle rubble in Sabine County near the Louisiana border.
To help piece together the shuttle disaster puzzle, investigators plan to assemble the shuttle fragments beginning this week at NASA's shuttle base in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The space station crew has been limited to two full-time residents since last year's suspension of space shuttle flights in the wake of the Columbia accident.
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He is the first person to ever see the underbelly of the shuttle while in orbit and was manoeuvred into position by the ISS's Canadarm2 18m (58-foot) robotic arm.
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He returned to NASA twice to serve on boards of enquiry, the first into the near-disaster of Apollo 13, the second into the disintegration of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986.
With strong management, Delta got past the merger issues relatively smoothly and began not only running a good operation but also innovating, with iPads available free of charge in gate areas and Porsche shuttle service for premium passengers in Atlanta.
The fuel is also being tested in shuttle buses operated by Alamo and National Car Rental.
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President Reagan used the intimate space to comfort the public after space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986.
Wreaths were also ripped up in the overnight attack at the memorial garden in Killowen Orange Hall in Shuttle Hill.
He recalls the case of Gilberto Araiza, who, along with an accomplice, fatally stabbed a city shuttle bus driver in 1983.
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Today the Space Shuttle Enterprise arrived in New York City today, thanks to a lift from a Boeing 747.
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