A lot of these things will fly in later forms on the space station themselves, or a later form of that research will, once they kind of find out some of the basics from flying it on shuttle.

As always, we prepare for all sorts of contingencies. And the first few days of the flight up until docking on Day 3 are all spent really in the rendezvous because we launch at a time that puts us in an optimal position to catch up to station.

Although I know a lot of the previous shuttle flights, in theory, had their tasks laid out; but there were still some changes that came along for them.

Linda M. Godwin Quotes