Air Force Col. Lee Archambault will lead the crew of STS-119, and Navy Cmdr. Tony Antonelli will serve as the pilot.
The mission specialists for the flight will be NASA astronauts Joseph Acaba, John Phillips, Steve Swanson, Richard Arnold and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata.
Right: Astronauts Lee Archambault (left) and Tony Antonelli, STS-119 commander and pilot, near a NASA DC-9 aircraft prior to a Heavy Aircraft Training (HAT) session at Ellington Field near NASA's Johnson Space Center.- Photo Credit, NASA
Wakata will remain on the station, replacing Expedition 18 Flight Engineer Sandra Magnus, who returns to Earth with the STS-119 crew. He will serve as a flight engineer for Expeditions 18 and 19, and he will return to Earth on shuttle mission STS-127.
Discovery will carry the S6 truss segment to complete the 361-foot-long backbone of the space station. The truss includes the fourth pair of solar array wings and electronics that convert sunlight to power for the orbiting laboratory.
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