Before entering Space Shuttle Discovery, STS-102 Pilot James Kelly gets help with his launch and entry suit from technicians in the White Room. The mission is Kelly’s first Shuttle flight. Discovery is carrying the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Leonardo on the eighth construction flight to the International Space Station. The primary delivery system used to resupply and return Station cargo requiring a pressurized environment, Leonardo will deliver up to 10 tons of laboratory racks filled with equipment, experiments and supplies for outfitting the newly installed U.S. Laboratory Destiny. Discovery is set to launch March 8 at 6:42 a.m. EST. The 12-day mission is expected to end with a landing at KSC on March 20 KSC01pp0450

The Space Shuttle program was the United States government's manned launch vehicle program from 1981 to 2011, administered by NASA and officially beginning in 1972. The Space Shuttle system—composed of an orbiter launched with two reusable solid rocket boosters and a disposable external fuel tank— carried up to eight astronauts and up to 50,000 lb (23,000 kg) of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO). When its mission was complete, the orbiter would re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and lands as a glider. Although the concept had been explored since the late 1960s, the program formally commenced in 1972 and was the focus of NASA's manned operations after the final Apollo and Skylab flights in the mid-1970s. It started with the launch of the first shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981, on STS-1. and finished with its last mission, STS-135 flown by Atlantis, in July 2011.