![]() Paving the way to future discovery, the Return to Flight mission will make a historic turn in exploration - a turn that is not possible without international cooperation and the many faces behind the Shuttle's return. Image to left: STS-114 Pilot James Kelly trains for an emergency egress in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory near the Johnson Space Center, Houston. "We're going to do a significant number of new things in a lot of new areas that we had not done before," Kelly said. The crew has gone through intensive training to ensure a safe return to space for this flight and future flights. The first Shuttle flight since the loss of Columbia and her crew, STS-114 will test new safety procedures and resupply the International Space Station. As a father of four, Kelly explains to his children that while danger exists, the rewards of exploration far outweigh the risks. Now, Kelly embraces the new places to go and the new things to do as he prepares to pilot the Shuttle to space on the Return to Flight mission. In 2001, he successfully piloted the eighth Shuttle mission to visit the International Space Station aboard Discovery, the ship that will return the next Shuttle crew into space. With a proven flight track record, logging more than 3,000 hours in more than 35 different aircraft, Kelly qualified to pilot a Space Shuttle flight crew. He was selected to NASA's Astronaut Corps and reported to the Johnson Space Center in 1996. Air Force Academy in 1986 and a master's in aerospace engineering from the University of Alabama in 1996. Credit: NASAĮver persistent, Kelly received a bachelor's degree in astronautical engineering from the U.S. ![]() "No one had gone from my town before." Image to right: James Kelly poses with a fighter plane in this undated photo. "I was from a small town in Iowa, never really heard of the Air Force Academy," he said. When it came time for college, a brochure with a picture of the Air Force Academy Chapel - an architectural marvel like a myriad of fighter planes massed together, noses jutting toward the sky - caught his attention. Unlike most others, Kelly never wavered from that goal. Like many 5-year-olds enamored with the Apollo moon missions, Kelly proclaimed his destiny - to become an astronaut and fly into space. "I remember the family coming together around the TV," Kelly reminisced,"and everyone talking about it, my dad taking me out in the yard and pointing to the moon when there were men walking on it." ![]() Kelly remembers the powerful memories etched in his mind when man first planted his foot on the moon's dusty surface. The low-flying planes heard just beyond the nearby cornfields where he grew up in small-town Burlington, Iowa, inspired Kelly at a very early age. Photo print pilot crack crack#Credit: Family photo/NASAĪs a boy, Kelly often would crack his bedroom window open at night, listening to the roar of aircraft engines take off and land. ![]() His dream: "to go somewhere new, to do something new." Image to left: STS-114 Pilot James Kelly in his youth. STS-114 Pilot James Kelly is pursuing a dream that he has had since childhood, as he prepares to guide the next Shuttle into space. ![]()
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