Signatures set to fly

Signatures from the Abram Lansing Elementary School students and staff will be traveling to space on the upcoming Space Shuttle mission STS-120, which is scheduled for launch on Tuesday, Oct. 23.

STS-120 is the 120th Space Shuttle flight, and the 23rd Space Shuttle mission to go to the International Space Station, and astronauts will be flying in the Space Shuttle Discovery. Among other things, this mission will take an Italian-built U.S. multi-port module for the Space Station and pick up Flight Engineer Clayton Anderson on the Space Station and return him to earth. The flight will also carry Anderson’s replacement, Daniel Tani, to the station.

Retired Air Force Col. Pamela A. Melroy will command the STS-120 mission to take the Node 2 connecting module to the station. Melroy, a veteran Shuttle pilot, is the second woman to command a Space Shuttle (Eileen Collins was the first). Marine Corps Col. George D. Zamka will serve as pilot. The flight's mission specialists will be Scott E. Parazynski, Army Col. Douglas H. Wheelock, Stephanie D. Wilson and Paolo A. Nespoli, a European Space Agency astronaut from Italy. Zamka, Wheelock and Nespoli will be making their first spaceflight.

The mission is scheduled to last 14 days. For more information on STS-120, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts120/mission_overview.html .

After the signatures return from space, the poster will be returned to Abram Lansing, along with a flight certificate and a picture of the crew that carried the posters into space.