James Donald "Wxb" Wetherbee is an American former naval officer and aviator, test pilot, aerospace engineer, and NASA astronaut. He is a veteran of six Space Shuttle missions and is the only American to have commanded five spaceflight missions.
STS-32 was the thirty-third mission of the shuttle program and ninth of Columbia. It was the first use of Launch Pad 39A and also marked the first use of the Mobile Launcher Platform No. 3 (MLP-3) in the shuttle program. This was the longest flight of the shuttle program lasting nearly 11 days. Its primary missions were to deploy a defence 10 satellite and retrieved NASAs Long Duration Exposure Facility.
Low Earth OrbitSTS-63 was the first mission of the US/Russian Shuttle-Mir Program, which carried out the first rendezvous of the American Space Shuttle with Russia's space station Mir. Known as the 'Near-Mir' mission, the flight used Space Shuttle Discovery, which lifted off from launch pad 39B on 3 February 1995 from Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
Low Earth OrbitSTS-102 was a Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS) flown by Space Shuttle Discovery and launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. STS-102 flew in March 2001; its primary objectives were resupplying the ISS and rotating the Expedition 1 and Expedition 2 crews.
Low Earth OrbitSTS-113 was a Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS) flown by Space Shuttle Endeavour. During the 14-day mission in late 2002, Endeavour and its crew extended the ISS backbone with the P1 truss and exchanged the Expedition 5 and Expedition 6 crews aboard the station. With Commander Jim Wetherbee and Pilot Paul Lockhart at the controls, Endeavour docked with the station on 25 November 2002 to begin seven days of station assembly, spacewalks and crew and equipment transfers. This was Endeavour’s last flight before entering its Orbiter Major Modification period until 2007, and also the last shuttle mission before the Columbia disaster.
Low Earth OrbitThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. NASA have many launch facilities but most are inactive. The most commonly used pad will be LC-39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.