Discovery crew ready for work — and history

By Marcia Dunn

updated 12:37 p.m. ET June 3, 2008

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The seven astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery will deliver and install Japan’s massive lab, Kibo, or Hope, at the international space station.

Here's a look at the six men and one woman who will tackle the job:

Commander Mark Kelly
Mark Kelly is probably best known for looking and sounding exactly like another astronaut — his identical twin brother, Scott, also a space shuttle skipper — and being married to a congresswoman.

Kelly married U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., in November.

As for who’s the big shot in the family, Kelly quickly says, “She is.”

The two have invited a number of Washington bigwigs to the shuttle launch, as well as family and friends.

Getty Images file Commander Mark Kelly

This will be the third spaceflight for Kelly, 44, a Navy commander and former test pilot, but his first as commander. NASA picked him as an astronaut in 1996.

He flew 39 combat missions in the 1991 Gulf War.

Kelly has two daughters, ages 10 and 13, from his previous marriage. He is from West Orange, N.J.

Pilot Kenneth Ham
After 10 years of astronaut service, Ham is finally on the verge of reaching space.

The 43-year-old Navy commander said the long wait has been worth it — “without a doubt.”

“Sometimes it’s been a little challenging staying focused on why I’m here and especially what I’m doing,” he said. “However, on the other hand, it’s been an incredible blessing.”

Getty Images file Pilot Ken Ham

His Navy peers have probably spent at least half of the past 10 years “on a ship somewhere on the other side of the planet, away from their family and their kids,” said Ham, whose sons are 14 and 15. “They’ve missed out on all the things I’ve gotten to see in raising Ryan and Randy. So I’m incredibly fortunate to be able to say that I was their Little League coach and their soccer coach and was there on school night.”

His sons are from a previous marriage to Linda Ham, a former high-level shuttle manager who was demoted following the 2003 Columbia disaster. Kenneth Ham has since remarried.

Ham — born in Plainfield, N.J. — was one of the Navy’s first F/A-18 Super Hornet test pilots.

Karen Nyberg
Nyberg will become the 50th woman to fly in space. Her first flight will precede by just a few weeks the 45th anniversary of the first woman in space, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, and the 25th anniversary of the first American woman in space, Sally Ride.

Getty Images file Karen Nyberg

“What I’m really looking forward to is the time when we’re not counting anymore,” Nyberg said.

Nyberg, 38, a mechanical engineer, decided in elementary school she wanted to be an astronaut. She grew up with two brothers and three sisters in Vining, Minn., the type of place characterized by Garrison Keillor in his “A Prairie Home Companion” radio show. “I’m from a Norwegian background, went to the Lutheran church, had the potluck dinners in the basement,” she said, laughing.

Nyberg started out as a college intern at Johnson Space Center in Houston in 1991. She received a patent for a robot intended to help spacewalking astronauts and went on to earn a doctorate and secure a full-time NASA job. NASA picked her as an astronaut in 2000 on her first try. She will become the first person to operate three robot arms in orbit: the shuttle’s, the station’s and the one on the new Japanese lab.

Nyberg, who is single, is taking into space a few pieces of fabric to make into a quilt after the shuttle mission.

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