Ashland-Greenwood Alum Clay Anderson to Launch on STS-131
February 17, 2010
Ashland-Greenwood alum and NASA Astronaut, Clayton Anderson, is busy preparing for his next launch on the space shuttle to the International Space Station. Anderson is a member of the crew of STS-131.
Commander Alan Poindexter will lead the STS-131 mission to the International Space Station aboard space shuttle Discovery. Jim Dutton will serve as the pilot. Mission Specialists in addition to Clay include Rick Mastracchio, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson and Naoko Yamazaki of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
Discovery will deliver a multi-purpose logistics module filled with science racks to be transferred to laboratories on the International Space Station. The mission will feature three spacewalks.
Mastracchio and Anderson will conduct three six-and-a-half-hour-long spacewalks on flight days 5, 7 and 9 to replace an ammonia tank assembly, retrieve a Japanese experiment from the station’s exterior and switch out a rate gyro assembly on the S0 element of the station’s truss.
The launch was originally planned for March 18. Suzanne Singleton notified the school district on Tuesday that the launch had been postponed. According to Singleton, "Unusually cold weather in Florida has prevented the completion of Space Shuttle Discovery processing, as previously planned. This has forced NASA to change our planned launch date. The new launch opportunity will be no earlier than April 5, 2010. Additionally, all NASA-sponsored activities will adjust accordingly to accommodate this change."
Check back on this website for more information on Ashland-Greenwood alum Clayton Anderson.
