NASA Sets Jan. 22 Shuttle Launch With Canadian, German in Crew

NASA has chosen Jan. 22 as the date for the year’s first space shuttle launch, a weeklong scientific research mission involving foreign astronauts.

Mission managers set the launch date Thursday following a meeting at Kennedy Space Center.

Discovery is scheduled to blast off at 5:53 a.m. PST on Jan. 22 with seven astronauts. The crew will include German physicist Ulf Merbold, who flew in space once before, and neurologist Roberta Bondar, who will become the second Canadian to venture into orbit. The rest of the crew will be from the United States.

The astronauts will conduct medical experiments on one another and monitor the growth of various plants and small animals. Among the laboratory specimens will be fruit flies, roundworms, slime mold, lentil roots, and wheat and oat seedlings.

More than 200 scientists from around the world are collaborating with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on the seven-day mission.

It will be the 45th shuttle flight and the first Spacelab mission since last summer. The astronauts will float from the cabin through a tunnel to the pressurized laboratory module in the cargo bay.