Kirsten Williams Headquarters, Washington DC February 18, 2000 (Phone: 202/358-0243) Doug Peterson Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX (Phone: 281/483-5111) RELEASE: 00-29 CREWS NAMED TO CONTINUE SPACE STATION ASSEMBLY Veteran Shuttle commanders James Halsell (Col., USAF) and Terrence Wilcutt (Lt. Col., USMC) will lead the next two Space Shuttle missions to continue on-orbit assembly of the International Space Station NASA managers announced today, as they officially added Shuttle mission STS-106 to the manifest. Halsell will lead a crew of seven on the STS-101 mission, which is scheduled to launch aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis no earlier than April 13. Pilot Scott Horowitz (Lt. Col., USAF) and mission specialists Mary Ellen Weber (Ph.D.) and Jeffrey Williams (Lt. Col., USA) will remain as part of the STS-101 crew. Completing the STS-101 crew are mission specialists James Voss (Col., USA), Susan Helms (Lt. Col., USAF), and cosmonaut Yuri V. Usachev, who all later will serve as the second resident International Space Station crew. Three mission specialists previously assigned to STS-101, Ed Lu (Ph.D.) and cosmonauts Yuri Malenchenko (Col., Russian Air Force) and Boris Marukov (M.D.), will move to the STS-106 mission to perform tasks linked to the planned July arrival of the Russian-built service module. Wilcutt will lead the seven-member crew on the STS-106 mission, which is scheduled to launch aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis no earlier than August 19. Joining Wilcutt, Lu, Malenchenko and Marukov are pilot Scott Altman (Lt. Cmdr., USN) and mission specialists Richard Mastracchio and Dan Burbank (Lt. Cmdr., USCG). STS-106 will be the first space flight for Burbank and Mastracchio, members of the 1996 class of astronauts. The original mission objectives for STS-101 have been distributed between the two missions, with the STS-101 crew preparing the space station for the arrival of the Zvezda service module by conducting one spacewalk, performing some maintenance tasks on board the station, and delivering a variety of logistics and supplies to the orbiting outpost. The STS-106 astronauts, scheduled to visit the space station following the arrival of Zvezda, will conduct at least one spacewalk to perform tasks linked to the presence of the service module. They will also transfer various supplies to outfit the station in preparation for the arrival of the first long-duration crew. In addition to these assignments, European Space Agency astronaut Umberto Guidoni (Ph.D.) has been named to the crew of STS-100, which will carry the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (Raffaello), provided by the Italian Space Agency for the space station. Guidoni joins Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield (Col., Canadian Air Force) and Scott Parazynski (Ph.D.), who previously were named to the flight. For complete biographical information on these crewmembers or any other astronaut, see the NASA Internet astronaut biography home page at URL: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios -end-