Tag Archives: STS-131

You know it’s a quiet mission when the journalists are more focused on milestones than the missile just launched. An hour after the near-flawless dawn flight to space by shuttle Discovery on April 5, the reporters on site talked about this fourth-last flight of the program, that record number of women in space, and the two Japanese meeting face to face for the first time.

The seven-member STS-131 crew headed to the International Space Station aboard space shuttle Discovery after its launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 6:21 a.m. EDT. The liftoff came 45 minutes before sunrise Monday, Apr. 5, and lit up Florida’s Space Coast sky. The STS-131 Commander is Alan Poindexter; Jim Dutton is the Pilot and the Mission Specialists are Rick Mastracchio, Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson, …