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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- The shuttle training aircraft, or STA, with STS-117 Commander Frederick Sturckow and Pilot Lee Archambault in the cockpit begins to taxi to the runway at KSC's Shuttle Landing Facility. Sturckow and Archambault will be making practice landings in the STA, which is a Grumman American Aviation-built Gulf Stream II jet that was modified to simulate an orbiter's cockpit, motion and visual cues, and handling qualities. In flight, the STA duplicates the orbiter's atmospheric descent trajectory from approximately 35,000 feet altitude to landing on a runway. STS-117 is scheduled to launch at 7:38 p.m. June 8. During the 11-day mission and three spacewalks, the crew will work with flight controllers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to install the 17-ton segment on the station's girder-like truss and deploy the set of solar arrays, S3/S4. The mission will increase the space station's power capability in preparation for the arrival of new science modules from the European and Japanese space agencies. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett