Hank, Teddy, Duke, and Jimmy were training to fly chase—to be the pilots who guided the shuttle to the landing site once it reentered the atmosphere. Vanessa and Griff were spending a lot of time in the dunk tank, experimenting with what was possible on spacewalks. Lydia and Harrison had been added to the team working on the thermal protection system—the shuttle’s complex protective skin of tiles and blankets—which meant they had the most hands-on time with the spacecraft itself. And Donna, Marty, and Joan had been assigned to Spacelab, an orbital science laboratory designed by NASA’s European
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