ASTRONAUT JIM DUTTON: Mark Kelly is a Navy commander. He joined
NASA with the class of 1996 and, as we said, it's his third flight.
He flew in 2001 on STS-108 and then flew the second reutnr-to-flight mission on STS-121 in 2006.
And actually, he's one of only two veteran astronauts on this flight, the other one being
Air Force Reserve Col. Mike Fossum and they flew together on STS-121.
ALLARD BEUTEL: And now we're looking at Greg Chamitoff.
ASTRONAUT JIM DUTTON: That's right. Greg is one of our shuttle
rotating crew members, or shrecs, as we call them.
He's going to go up and spend it looks like six months on the space station replacing Garrett Reisman.
We now see Ken Ham. Also a Navy commander and also from New Jersey. We didn't mention that,
but both Mark Kelly and Ken Ham being Naval aviators and both from New Jersey. This will be Ken's first flight.
He came into the astronaut corps in 1998 and is a 1987 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.
ALLARD BEUTEL: Mike Fossum has joined.
ASTRONAUT JIM DUTTON: Air Force Colonel, Air Force Reserve
Colonel and member of the class of 1998 also.
Mike was on STS-121, like we said earlier, with Commander Mark Kelly. They're the two veteran flyers on this mission.
Mike Fossum climbing in on the middeck and about to join Greg Chamitoff who's got his helmet and gloves on now.
And now we just start to get a view of Karen Nyberg, starting to get her harness on. Karen's also a PhD in Mechanical
Engineering and her first flight. She has the distinction of being the fiftieth woman in space, I believe.
And now we can see coming into view, Akihiko Hoshide, classmate of mine, getting harness on. This is Aki's first flight also.
ALLARD BEUTEL: This is Shuttle Launch Control at T-minus 1-hour, 35 minutes and 45 seconds.
Launch controllers are not working any issues right now that would prevent us from lifting off at 5:02 p.m. to start the
STS-124 mission of space shuttle Discovery and its seven astronauts.
CONTROLLER: OK, OTC, at this time we are ready to close the hatch.