BROWN TO COMMAND STS-95 MISSION



February 13, 1998



Jennifer McCarter
Headquarters, Washington, DC
(Phone: 202/358-1639)



Eileen Hawley/James Hartsfield
Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX
(Phone: 281/483-5111)

<h4>Release: H98-29</h4> <h3>Brown to Command STS-95 Mission</h3> 

Astronaut Curt Brown (Lt. Col., USAF) will lead the crew of the STS-95 
mission, supporting a variety of research payloads including 
deployment of the Spartan solar-observing spacecraft, the Hubble 
Space Telescope Orbital Systems Test Platform, and investigations on 
spaceflight and the aging process. STS-95 is scheduled for launch in 
October 1998.



Joining Brown on board Discovery will be Pilot Steven W. Lindsey 
(Major, USAF) and Mission Specialists Scott E. Parazynski, M.D.; 
Stephen K. Robinson, Ph.D.; and European Space Agency astronaut Pedro 
Duque, as well as Payload Specialist, NASDA Astronaut Chiaki Mukai, 
M.D., Ph.D. Senator John Glenn was named as a payload specialist on 
Jan. 16.



The primary objectives of STS-95 are to deploy the Spartan spacecraft 
for two days of free flight during which it will study the Sun's 
corona and to conduct research with the Hubble Space Telescope 
Orbital Systems Test Platform (HOST) and the International Extreme 
Ultraviolet Hitchhiker-3 (IEH-3) payloads. The Spartan spacecraft was 
previously carried on board the STS-87 mission in November but did 
not activate properly following its deployment from the Shuttle.



"This crew will be supporting a challenging research mission," said 
David C. Leestma, director of Flight Crew Operations. "They will be 
working with investigations that span a wide range of disciplines, 
and I have every confidence in the ability of this crew to carry out 
those responsibilities."



STS-95 will mark Brown&rsquo;s fifth space flight, and his second as 
Commander. He flew as pilot on STS-47 in 1992, STS-66 in 1994 and 
STS-77 in 1996. He commanded STS-85, an eight-day mission in August 
1997 to deploy and retrieve the CRISTA-SPAS payload.



STS-95 will be the second flight for both Lindsey and Robinson. 
Lindsey flew previously as the pilot on Columbia in November/December 
1997 for the fourth U.S. Microgravity Payload mission in a mission 
lasting16 days. Robinson was a member of the STS-85 crew which also 
was commanded by Brown. Parazynski will be making his third trip to 
space, having previously flown as a member of the STS-66 mission in 
1994 and STS-86 in 1997. Duque, a member of the 1996 astronaut class, 
will be making his first space flight. Selected by the European Space 
Agency in 1992, he was the Alternate Payload Specialist for STS-78 in 
1996. Mukai will be making her second journey into space during 
STS-95. She flew previously as a Payload Specialist for the Second 
International Microgravity Laboratory Mission, STS-65, in July 1994.



In February 1962, Glenn became the first American to conduct an 
orbital flight of the planet on board Friendship 7. That mission 
lasted just under five hours. During STS-95, Glenn will conduct a 
series of investigations designed to better understand the 
correlation between the aging process on Earth and the physiological 
effects of spaceflight on the human body.



During the ten-day mission, crew members will support a variety of 
microgravity research projects. The HOST platform will validate 
possible components to be used during the third Hubble Space 
Telescope servicing mission in late 1999, while the TAS-2 payload 
will support five separate experiments ranging over a variety of 
disciplines.



For additional information on the STS-95 crew, or any astronaut, see 
the NASA Internet biography home page at URL:



http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/

	
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