With the upcoming launch of Discovery and the crew of STS-131 an acquaintance of mine asked a question that I thought most everyone already knew. He asked me, “So what goes into a space shuttle crew?” As I began explaining the training and degree requirements he shook his head and told me that wasn’t what he meant. He seemed to think that a shuttle crew is designed much like the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise with a captain, science officer, commander, doctor and a communications specialist. The answer is – no, it’s not really like that at all.

A normal space shuttle crew these days consists of the following:

Commander. Typically a military fighter pilot with years of experience and at least one mission in space under his belt already.

Pilot. Also a military fighter pilot, but more often than not it will be his or her first mission.

Mission Specialist. These men and women come from a diverse background of occupations and can come from a variety of occupational disciplines such as military, science, engineering, medicine and others.

Payload Specialist. This type of astronaut is usually a one-shot, meaning he/she is going up with some type of experiment or equipment that the shuttle is carrying up and has highly specialized skills dedicated to that experiment/equipment.

That is pretty much it when it comes to shuttle astronaut designations, but the International Space Station (I.S.S) does have mission engineers, science officers and such. Although the crew of the I.S.S. is very diverse with members coming from the U.S, Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Union they still stick to an agreed upon structure that alternates between I.S.S. partner members.