Ah - the next Shuttle is ready for countdown with a little more than 5 days to lift-off on March 11.  If you have blinked, perhaps you didn't notice that there is not only a significant Russian presence on the ISS (International Space Station), but a European presence too!

STS 122 left a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut, Léopold Eyharts, on the station when the European Space Agency's Columbus Laboratory was brought up and became a part of the ISS.  STS 123, which will launch on March 11, will take up the first of three components of the Japanese contribution, Kibo (or Hope).  Also, the Canadian "hand" (Canadian Space Agency's two-armed robotic system called Dextre) is becoming a part of the robotic arm they contributed such a long time ago!  Japanese astronaut Takao Doi is contributing to the construction of the ISS during the mission.

Note that the links above for STS 122 and STS 123 are fixed links, whereas the first link is the home page for the Shuttle and will therefore change as NASA changes the site.  Also for a direct link to the ISS click here.

Those of you who are readers from last fall may remember that I was able to watch the launch of STS 121 on NASA TV from here.  Another note is that Jules Verne is ready for lift-off.  The Jules Verne is a new automated transfer vehicle for supplying the ISS, built and launched by the ESA, and therefore launched from Kourou, French Guiana on an Ariane 5 rocket.

Commander Peggy Whitson and flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko are the other two inhabitants of the ISS.