STS-113

Jim Wetherbee

• Birthday: 11/27/1952
• Role: Commander
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 01/09/1990
• Last Flight: 11/23/2002

James Donald “Wxb” Wetherbee is an American former naval officer and aviator, test pilot, aerospace engineer, and NASA astronaut. He is a veteran of six Space Shuttle missions and is the only American to have commanded five spaceflight missions.

Paul Lockhart

• Birthday: 04/28/1956
• Role: Pilot
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 06/05/2002
• Last Flight: 11/23/2002

Paul Scott “Paco” Lockhart is an American aerospace engineer, retired United States Air Force Colonel and NASA astronaut, a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions.

John Herrington

• Birthday: 09/14/1958
• Role: Mission Specialist
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 11/23/2002
• Last Flight: 11/23/2002

John Bennett Herrington is a retired United States Naval Aviator and former NASA astronaut. In 2002, Herrington became the first enrolled member of a Native American tribe to fly in space.

Donald Pettit

• Birthday: 04/20/1955
• Role: Mission Specialist
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 11/23/2002
• Last Flight: 12/21/2011

Donald Roy Pettit is an American chemical engineer and a NASA astronaut. He is a veteran of two long-duration stays aboard the International Space Station, one space shuttle mission and a six-week expedition to find meteorites in Antarctica. As of 2018, at age 63, he is NASA’s oldest active astronaut.

Nikolai Budarin

• Birthday: 04/29/1963
• Role: Mission Specialist
• Nationality: Russian
• First Flight: 06/27/1995
• Last Flight: 11/23/2002

Nikolai Mikhailovich Budarin (Russian: Николай Михайлович Бударин) (born April 29, 1953 in Kirya, Chuvashia) is a retired Russian cosmonaut, a veteran of three extended space missions aboard the Mir Space Station and the International Space Station. He has also performed eight career spacewalks with a total time of 44 hours.

Named a cosmonaut candidate in 1989, Budarin’s first space mission was a long-term assignment aboard the space station Mir in 1995. Since then, he again made extended stays on Mir in 1998 and the International Space Station Expedition 6 from 2002 to 2003.

Ken Bowersox

• Birthday: 11/14/1956
• Role: Mission Specialist
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 06/25/1992
• Last Flight: 11/23/2002

Kenneth Dwane “Sox” Bowersox is a United States Navy officer, and a former NASA astronaut. He is a veteran of five Space Shuttle launches and an extended stay aboard the International Space Station. When he launched on STS-73 at the age of 38 years and 11 months, he became the youngest person ever to command a Space Shuttle vehicle.

Michael López-Alegría

• Birthday: 05/30/1958
• Role: Mission Specialist
• Nationality: American
• First Flight: 10/20/1995
• Last Flight: 01/18/2024

Michael López-Alegría is a Spanish-American astronaut; a veteran of three Space Shuttle missions and one International Space Station mission. He is known for having performed ten spacewalks so far in his career, presently holding the second longest all-time EVA duration record and having the third longest spaceflight of any American at the length of 215 days; this time was spent on board the ISS from September 18, 2006 to April 21, 2007.

STS-113

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

STS-113 was a Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS) flown by Space Shuttle Endeavour. During the 14-day mission in late 2002, Endeavour and its crew extended the ISS backbone with the P1 truss and exchanged the Expedition 5 and Expedition 6 crews aboard the station. With Commander Jim Wetherbee and Pilot Paul Lockhart at the controls, Endeavour docked with the station on 25 November 2002 to begin seven days of station assembly, spacewalks and crew and equipment transfers. This was Endeavour’s last flight before entering its Orbiter Major Modification period until 2007, and also the last shuttle mission before the Columbia disaster.

Launch Complex 39A

Kennedy Space Center, FL, USA

Launch Complex 39A has witnessed the launch of 174 rockets, including 173 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.

United Space Alliance

United Space Alliance (USA) is a spaceflight operations company. USA is a joint venture which was established in August 1995 as a Limited Liability Company (LLC), equally owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin.