Hastings College graduate Clayton Anderson will be aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis when it launches Friday, June 8, from Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Fla. Projected launch time is 7:38 p.m. EDT. Anderson will spend four months at the International Space Station, returning to earth in late October on Space Shuttle Discovery. The other six crew members will return home following an 11-day mission, NASA’s 21st mission to the International Space Station.

 During the mission and three spacewalks, the crew will work with flight controllers at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, to install a 17-ton segment on the station's girder-like truss and deploy a set of solar arrays. The mission will increase the International Space Station's power capability in preparation for the arrival of new science modules from the European and Japanese space agencies.

 A select group of Anderson’s family and friends will be at Kennedy Space Center to witness the Atlantis launch first hand. Guests include college classmate, Mike Karloff and his family, Hastings, Neb.; and two of Anderson’s former Hastings College professors.

 Dr. Clyde Sachtleben, professor emeritus of physics; and Dr. Carl Throckmorton, professor emeritus of physics and mathematics; will be in the audience watching their former student head to space.

 A native of Ashland, Neb., Anderson graduated from Hastings College in 1981. He joined NASA’s Johnson Space Center in 1983 in the Mission Planning and Analysis Division where he performed rendezvous and proximity operations trajectory designs for early space shuttle and space station missions. Since 1996, Anderson has served as manager of the Emergency Operations Center.

 More information is available on the NASA website: http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle
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