Table of Contents

Julie Payette's Journal

Launch –9 days
Ellington Field – NASA Flight Operations –
Houston, TX
June 4, 2009 – 6:30 p.m.

We've just landed back in Houston after a busy day of launch rehearsal at Kennedy Space Center. We have a break tomorrow, Friday June 5, so we can spend time with our families. But on Saturday June 6, we go into quarantine and fly back to the Kennedy Space Center on Monday June 8 for the real launch. Time is going by so quickly, I can almost feel it slipping through my fingers.

Thankfully, we are ready, we are calm and we are looking forward to accomplishing this mission. And what a mission it will be: 16 days, 5 spacewalks, 3 robotic arms in operation almost every day, 13 people aboard the Station, 5 different nationalities. It will be exciting!

Although our crew was already close and had been working well together through the last year's training, these last days have brought us even closer together. As the big day approaches, it is even more important to support each other and work as a team. What people are able to achieve as a team is phenomenal. As the saying goes, a group is greater than the sum of its parts! And this is true on Earth as well...