Bill Nelson Nelson was a Payload Specialist on 's STS-61-C mission from January 12 to 18, 1986. The Space Shuttle "Columbia" landed at Edwards AFB at 5:59 a.m. PST, on January 18. The mission's elapsed time was 6 days, 2 hours, 45 minutes, and 51 seconds. This flight was the last successful space shuttle flight prior to the "Challenger" accident, which occurred only ten days after the return of the "Columbia". In 1988, Nelson published a book about his space flight experience entitled "Mission: An American Congressman's Voyage to Space". In 1972, Nelson was elected to the Florida House of Representatives as
Space Shuttle retirement to 2028 or beyond. Until another U.S. crew vehicle is ready, crews will access the ISS exclusively aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. The Soyuz was chosen as the ISS lifeboat during the development of the International Space Station, and has been one of the space taxis used by the international participants to this program. A Soyuz took Expedition 1, which included one U.S. astronaut in the year 2000. Previously the United States and Russia had collaborated on extended the Mir space station with the Shuttle-Mir program in the 1990s. Although the Orion spacecraft is oriented towards deep-space missions such as