"The completion of STS-124 with the delivery of the Japanese laboratory really brings us very close to what we have dreamed about for the space station all along."
"It's actually pretty exciting to see the space station close to its final configuration, so that it can be used in the way that it was originally intended."
"Of course, JAXA and Japanese government has been involved in a planning and engineering development phase with space station for years. Now they become real true, integrated operators."
"When we get the Japanese laboratory up and attached during this mission at least for me I feel like the major modules are all now installed and the space station can really start to do what it was intended to do, to be this world class laboratory."
Six of the crew members who flew space shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-122 stopped by Kennedy Space Center to deliver amazing accounts of launch and flight.
Commander Peggy Whitson and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko of the 16th International Space Station crew landed on the steppes of Kazakhstan around 4:30 a.m. EDT Saturday after 192 days in space.
The cargo aboard the space shuttle Discovery on mission STS-124 already has traveled halfway around Earth, more than 10,000 miles over land and sea. It’s now ready for the culmination of its 23-year journey to the International Space Station.
Astronaut Garrett Reisman has thrown the ultimate fastball for the New York Yankees, a pitch that clocked in at better than five miles a second.
Commander Sergei Alexandrovich Volkov and cosmonaut Oleg Dmitrievich Kononenko of the 17th International Space Station crew docked their Soyuz TMA-12 with the orbiting laboratory at 8:57 a.m. EDT Thursday, marking the beginning of their six-month stay aboard.
Commander Sergei Alexandrovich Volkov and cosmonaut Oleg Dmitrievich Kononenko of the 17th International Space Station crew launched in their Soyuz TMA-12 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 7:16 a.m. EDT Tuesday to begin a six-month stay in space.