Ten years ago today — September 8, 2000 — the Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a mission to prepare the International Space Station to receive its first crew.
(STS-106 launch. NASA image.)
STS-106 carried astronauts Terrence W. Wilcutt, Scott D. Altman, Daniel C. Burbank, Edward T. Lu, and Richard A. Mastracchio, along with cosmonauts Yuri I. Malenchenko and Boris V. Morukov, on an 11-day mission to the nascent space station. They unloaded supplies; routed and connected power, data, and communications lines; installed equipment; and boosted the station to a higher orbit.
In other space history, on this date a half-century ago, President Eisenhower and Mrs. George C. Marshall dedicated the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
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