STS-128 Crew Selected For ISS Travel

NASA has assigned the crew for space shuttle mission STS-128. The flight will carry science and storage racks to the International Space Station. Marine Corps Col. Frederick W. “Rick” Sturckow will command space shuttle Atlantis on the STS-128 mission, targeted for launch July 30, 2009. Sturckow flew as the commander of STS-117 in 2007, and was the pilot of STS-105 in 2001 and STS-88 in 1998. Retired Air Force Col. Kevin A. Ford will serve as the pilot. Mission specialists are NASA astronauts John D. “Danny” Olivas, retired Army Col. Patrick G. Forrester, Jose M. Hernandez and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Christer Fuglesang. The mission will deliver a new station crew member, Nicole Stott, to the complex and return Tim Kopra to Earth. Ford, Hernandez and Stott will be making their first trips to space. Stott and Kopra were previously assigned in February to station missions. Atlantis will carry a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module filled with science and storage racks to the station. The mission will include three spacewalks to remove and replace a materials processing experiment outside ESA’s Columbus module and return an empty ammonia tank assembly.