STS-96

Kent Rominger

• Birthday: 08/07/1956
• Role: Commander
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 10/20/1995
• Last Flight: 04/19/2001

Kent Vernon “Rommel” Rominger is an American former astronaut, former NASA Chief of the Astronaut Office at Johnson Space Center, and a Captain in the United States Navy. Rominger holds the Space Shuttle Orbiter flight time record with 1610 hours on type. He joined ATK Launch Systems Group in 2006 as Vice President of Advanced Programs.

Rick Husband

• Birthday: 07/12/1957
• Role: Pilot
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 05/27/1999
• Last Flight: 01/16/2003

Rick Douglas Husband (July 12, 1957 – February 1, 2003) (Colonel, USAF) was an American astronaut and fighter pilot. He traveled into space twice: as Pilot of STS-96 and Commander of STS-107. He and the rest of the crew of STS-107 were killed when Columbia disintegrated during reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

Julie Payette

• Birthday: 10/20/1963
• Role: Mission Specialist
• Nationality: Canadian
• First Flight: 05/27/1999
• Last Flight: 07/15/2009

Julie Payette CC CMM COM CQ CD (born October 20, 1963) is the current Governor General of Canada, the 29th since Canadian Confederation. Before assuming office, she was a businesswoman, former member of the Canadian Astronaut Corps, and engineer. Payette has completed two spaceflights, STS-96 and STS-127, logging more than 25 days in space. She served as chief astronaut for the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and has served as capsule communicator at NASA Mission Control Center in Houston.

Valeri Tokarev

• Birthday: 10/29/1952
• Role: Mission Specialist
• Nationality: Russian
• First Flight: 05/27/1999
• Last Flight: 10/01/2005

Valeri Ivanovich Tokarev (Russian: Валерий Иванович Токарев; born October 29, 1952) is a Russian Air Force Colonel and test cosmonaut at the Yuri A. Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. Tokarev traveled to space twice, and has performed two career spacewalks, before retiring in June 2008.

Daniel T. Barry

• Birthday: 12/30/1953
• Role: Mission Specialist
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 01/11/1996
• Last Flight: 08/10/2001

Daniel Thomas Barry is an American engineer, scientist, and a retired NASA astronaut. He was a contestant on the CBS reality television program Survivor: Panama, as well as on BattleBots on ABC. He was at Singularity University from 2009–2012, where he was co-chair of the Faculty of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and the chair of the graduate summer program. He is also a co-founder of Fellow Robots, a telepresence robotics company and the founder and president of Denbar Robotics.

Ellen Ochoa

• Birthday: 05/10/1958
• Role: Mission Specialist
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 04/08/1993
• Last Flight: 04/08/2002

Ellen Ochoa is an American engineer, former astronaut and the current Director of the Johnson Space Center. Ochoa became director of the center upon the retirement of the previous director, Michael Coats, on December 31, 2012. In 1993 Ochoa became the first Hispanic woman in the world to go to space when she served on a nine-day mission aboard the shuttle Discovery.

Tamara E. Jernigan

• Birthday: 05/07/1959
• Role: Mission Specialist
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 06/05/1991
• Last Flight: 05/27/1999

Tamara Elizabeth “Tammy” Jernigan, Ph.D. is an American scientist and former NASA astronaut and a veteran of five shuttle missions.

STS-96

• Type: Human Exploration
• Orbit: Low Earth Orbit
• Launch Cost: $450,000,000

STS-96 was a Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS) flown by Space Shuttle Discovery, and the first shuttle flight to dock with the International Space Station. The shuttle carried the Spacehab module in the payload, filled with cargo for station outfitting. STS-96 launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on 27 May 1999 at 06:49:42 AM EDT.

Launch Complex 39B

Kennedy Space Center, FL, USA

Launch Complex 39B has witnessed the launch of 58 rockets, including 57 orbital launch attempts, while Kennedy Space Center, FL, USA, has been the site for 232 rocket launches.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration Space Shuttle

The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program name was Space Transportation System (STS). Five complete Space Shuttle orbiter vehicles were built and flown on a total of 135 missions from 1981 to 2011.