Tommy Holloway criticizes media coverage of space station program at pre-flight news conference. Photo: Spaceflight Now/NASA TV

The Soyuz taxi crew will dock with the station a few hours before Endeavour's landing. Another Progress supply ship will be launched around May 20 and the shuttle Atlantis will deliver the station's airlock in mid June.

"Things are going beyond my wildest expectations," said station program manager Tommy Holloway. "I believe this is an unprecedented period of history in human spaceflight in terms of the number of flights we've flown since last year when the service module was launched."

It is also a somewhat frustrating time, Holloway said. At least from a public relations standpoint.

"I'm very disappointed in the entire public awareness of what's going on 212 miles above the Earth in terms of the magnitude and the challenges, the overall complexity, how well it's been going," he told reporters last week. "It's like we're building the pyramids of Egypt in orbit and nobody's watching."

"All you guys want to talk about is what broke last week instead of what is really going on. So yeah, I'm disappointed. I think there's a terrific story out there about what this country and 16 other countries are doing together, building relationships across the world, doing some really incredible, fabulous things and we spend all our time talking about what in the end will be insignificant things."

Frustrating or not, "it's a great time to be an astronaut," Hadfield said. "We are in the thick of building space station, which from an astronaut's point of view provides a wealth of challenges and opportunities. It's just a great era for us as we put this thing together."

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