On Sat, 03 Sep 2005 14:56:43 -0400, Bob Noel
wrote in
::

In article ,
Larry Dighera wrote:

NASA had tentatively planned its next shuttle mission
for March,

I thought NASA had grounded the fleet indefinitely.
(yet, there is an STS-121 scheduled for March on
the NASA website).



This page says 'no earlier than March':
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/st..._overview.html

Expedition 12: Veteran Crewmen for ISS Science, Assembly Prep

08.24.05


Two veteran crewmembers will make up the 12th crew of the
International Space Station since continuous human presence began on
the orbiting laboratory in November 2000.

Image to left: From left are, Expedition 12 crewmembers Commander
William McArthur and Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev, as they train
inside a mockup of the Station's Destiny laboratory at Johnson Space
Center, Houston, TX. Credit: NASA

In addition to marking the fifth anniversary of this uninterrupted
presence of men and women in space, the crewmembers also will bring
the Station into the new year and welcome the resumption of Space
Shuttle flights to their home in orbit.

The six-month-plus stay of Expedition 12 will focus on Station
assembly preparations, maintenance and science in microgravity. The
commander is William McArthur, 54, a retired Army colonel. Cosmonaut
Valery Tokarev, 52, a Russian Air Force colonel, will serve as flight
engineer and Soyuz commander.

McArthur is making his fourth flight into space. Tokarev visited the
Station in his previous spaceflight, on a Shuttle mission in 1999.
McArthur and Tokarev will launch on a Soyuz spacecraft in early
October from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

With them will be Gregory Olsen, 60, who will spend eight days on the
Station under a contract with Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space
Agency. He will be the third private citizen to reach the Station.

Image to right: From left are, Expedition 12 crewmembers Commander
William McArthur and Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev, along with Space
Flight Participant Greg Olsen. Credit: NASA

McArthur and Tokarev will spend more than a week with their
predecessors, Expedition 11 Commander Sergei Krikalev and NASA Science
Officer John Phillips. Handover includes briefings on Station safety,
systems, procedures, equipment and science.

Olsen will return to Earth on Expedition 11's Soyuz with Krikalev and
Phillips.

McArthur and Tokarev were to have been joined during Expedition 12 by
European Space Agency Astronaut Thomas Reiter of Germany, 47. He was
to fly into space on the STS-121 mission.

With that Shuttle mission delayed until no earlier than March 2006,
Reiter would arrive at the ISS in the final days of the Expedition 12
increment. Reiter, who flew for six months on the Russian space
station Mir, would be the first non-American or non-Russian
long-duration crewmember on the Station. He will fly under a
commercial agreement between ESA and Roscosmos.

Image to left: European Space Agency Astronaut Thomas Reiter. Credit:
NASA ...