KSC-98pc1402

STS-95 Mission Commander Curtis L. Brown Jr. (at microphone) greets the media at the Shuttle Landing Facility after the crew's arrival aboard T-38 jets (in the background) to make final preparations for their launch, targeted for liftoff at 2 p.m. on Oct. 29. The other crew members are (left to right) Payload Specialist Chiaki Mukai, with the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA), Mission Specialist Stephen K. Robinson, Pilot Steven W. Lindsey, Mission Specialist Pedro Duque, with the European Space Agency (ESA), and Payload Specialist John H. Glenn Jr., senator from Ohio. Missing is Mission Specialist Scott E. Parazynski, who was delayed in the flight from Texas. The STS-95 mission includes research payloads such as the Spartan solar-observing deployable spacecraft, the Hubble Space Telescope Orbital Systems Test Platform, the International Extreme Ultraviolet Hitchhiker, as well as the SPACEHAB single module with experiments on space flight and the aging process. The mission is expected to last 8 days, 21 hours and 49 minutes, and return to KSC on Nov. 7