Managers selected a dozen mission specialists as potential candidates for the four mission specialist seats on STS-107. They were invited to attend a series of “informed consent” briefings, starting in March 2000. These are standard for any microgravity mission. where the astronauts are the test subjects. In the briefings, the astronauts are told about the science experiments, justifications for the science, and what's going to be expected of them. In many cases, astronauts will be asked to give blood, urine, and saliva samples before launch, during the mission, and after landing. On July 25, 2000 chief astronaut Charlie Precourt informed astronauts Mike Anderson, Dave Brown, Kalpana Chawla, and Laurel Clark that they were selected for the STS-107 science mission. Ilan Ramon had already been informally pencilled in. On October 27th Rick Husband and Willie McCool were selected to round out the crew.
Some of the potential candidate astronauts for STS-107 who weren't selected included Mario Runco, John Herrington, and Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers.
| Mario Runco on STS-54 |
John Herrington on STS-113 |
Andre Kuipers on space station |
Other astronauts became CACOs for each of the families. For example Lee Morin is the CACO for Dave Brown's family and Jim "Vegas" Kelly serves in that role for the Clark family.
Steve Lindsey with Kalpana Chawla on STS-87 |
Steve Lindsey and Scott Parazynski on STS-95 |
CACO Lee Morin (right) on STS-110 |
CACO Jim 'Vegas' Kelly on STS-102 |
On long missions four shifts are trained so nobody has to work more than six days in a row.
In addition three shifts of engineers and scientists supported the Spacehab payload operations in Mission Control.
Crew secretary Roz Hobgood a/k/a "The Great and Powerful Roz" was honored by a personal version of the crew's official photo with Roz posing with the crew. The inscription reads " To Roz, With never ending gratitude from your STS-107 crew!!" Photo courtesy of Roz Hobgood.
As part of the training the shuttle crew visited many of the scientists around the world to get acquainted with the scientists and learn how to operate their experiments. Among others the crew met with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Biotube team and posed for a photo
(l-r) Mike Anderson, Dave Brown, Willie McCool, Dave Cox, April Boody, Ilan Ramon, Karl Hasenstein, Laurel Clark, Rick Husband, and (barely visible) Kalpana Chawla. Photo courtesy of Dr. Karl Hasenstein.
Israeli Student Yuval Landau (left) and Palestinian Tariq Adwan worked together on the GOBBSS experiment. Photo by Donna Stevens, The Planetary Society.
The crew posed for a photo with the engineers and scientists responsible for the Combustion Module. Photo courtesy of Dr. Angel Abbud-Madrid.
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