Clayton Conrad Anderson is a retired NASA astronaut. Launched on STS-117, he replaced Sunita Williams on June 10, 2007, as a member of the ISS Expedition 15 crew. He is currently an author, a motivational speaker, and a Professor of Practice at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. In 2022 he became the president and CEO of the Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum.

STS-117 was a Space Shuttle mission flown by Space Shuttle Atlantis, launched from pad 39A of the Kennedy Space Center on June 8, 2007. Atlantis lifted off from the launch pad at 19:38 EDT. Damage from a hail storm on February 26, 2007, had previously caused the launch to be postponed from an originally-planned launch date of March 15, 2007. The launch of STS-117 marked the 250th orbital human spaceflight. It was also the heaviest flight of the Space Shuttle.