Everything looking up for Saturday space launch

June 12, 2009 By MARCIA DUNN , AP Aerospace Writer

(AP) -- NASA zipped through the final hours of its countdown for space shuttle Endeavour, on track for a Saturday morning launch to the international space station.

Forecasters were sticking with their 90 percent "go" weather forecast.

NASA was to begin fueling the spaceship late Friday night, with the seven astronauts climbing aboard in the wee hours of Saturday. Launch time is 7:17 a.m., less than an hour after sunrise.

Endeavour and its crew will deliver the final segment of Japan's huge lab, along with some spare parts for the orbiting outpost and more than 600 pounds of food for the six men living at the orbiting outpost.

When Endeavour pulls up, there will be 13 people together in orbit for the first time.

Of the seven astronauts, only one is a woman, a Canadian. The rest of the crew are U.S. citizens. On board the space station, the crew is more international. The six occupants, all men, represent Belgium, Canada, Japan and Russia, as well as the United States.

"It's like having your family descend on you for the holidays, right? And they're going to stay for a very long time when they come and they're bringing all their stuff," observed Mike Moses, chairman of NASA's mission management team.

Endeavour and its crew will spend 11 1/2 days at the space station. Five are planned.

"These crews have trained together quite a bit. They knew that they were going to be overlapping ... so they've gotten some good relationships with each other," Moses said Thursday.

The shuttle's arrival comes at a particularly busy time for the space station. The station crew doubled in size late last month; that's taken some adjustment for everyone involved. Then just a week ago, two of the crew went out on a spacewalk. Earlier this week, the two put their spacesuits back on and went into the air lock to work on a docking hatch.

NASA is pushing to launch Endeavour now because of the tight lineup of shuttle flights over the next 1 1/2 years. The space agency is under presidential direction to retire its three remaining shuttles and complete the station by the end of 2010 if possible.

Eight shuttle missions remain, including Endeavour's upcoming trip. Each one is dedicated to finishing the station, currently 81 percent complete, and hauling up supplies, spare parts and experiments.

The space station will be supplied over the long haul by unmanned Russian, European and Japanese craft, but none as big as the shuttle. That's why NASA needs to deliver large spare parts now, while the shuttles are still flying.

Until NASA's new spaceship is ready to carry passengers - which isn't expected to happen before 2015 - U.S. astronauts will hitch rides back and forth on the cramped Russian Soyuz spacecraft for up to $51 million a person.

©2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


Rank 5 /5 (1 vote)
Related Stories
Relevant PhysicsForums posts
  • Never ending outer space.....
    created15 hours ago
  • Neutron Star fragments?
    created17 hours ago
  • stationary or not?
    created21 hours ago
  • Scale of the Universe
    createdFeb 10, 2012
  • Titan's lack of impact craters
    createdFeb 09, 2012
  • Real pictures of black hole eating a star?
    createdFeb 08, 2012
  • More from Physics Forums - General Astronomy

More news stories

Salvage workers begin pumping fuel from Italian shipwreck

Salvage workers Sunday began pumping fuel from the shipwrecked Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia, a day ahead of schedule, officials said.

Space & Earth / Environment

created 32 minutes ago | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Latin America mining boom clashes with conservation

Latin America is experiencing a mining boom as prices rise fuelled by a hike in global demand, but the region is also being hit by a wave of violent protests, strikes and rallies by environmentalists.

Space & Earth / Environment

created 8 hours ago | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Political leaders play key role in how worried Americans are by climate change: study

More than extreme weather events and the work of scientists, it is national political leaders who influence how much Americans worry about the threat of climate change, new research finds.

Space & Earth / Environment

created Feb 06, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (6) | comments 73

NASA budget will axe Mars deal with Europe: scientists

US President Barack Obama's budget proposal to be submitted next week for 2013 will cut NASA's budget by 20 percent and eliminate a major partnership with Europe on Mars exploration, scientists said Thursday.

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Feb 10, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 55

Humans may have helped the decline of African rainforests 3000 years ago

(PhysOrg.com) -- Large areas of rainforests in Central Africa mysteriously disappeared over three thousand years ago, to be replaced by savannas. The prevailing theory has been that the cause was a change ...

Space & Earth / Environment

created Feb 10, 2012 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (14) | comments 20 | with audio podcast report


Scientists discover molecular secrets of 2,000-year-old Chinese herbal remedy

For roughly two thousand years, Chinese herbalists have treated Malaria using a root extract, commonly known as Chang Shan, from a type of hydrangea that grows in Tibet and Nepal. More recent studies suggest that halofuginone, ...

New method to examine batteries -- MRI from the inside

There is an ever-increasing need for advanced batteries for portable electronics, such as phones, cameras, and music players, but also to power electric vehicles and to facilitate the distribution and storage of energy derived ...

A mitosis mystery solved: How chromosomes align perfectly in a dividing cell

Although the process of mitotic cell division has been studied intensely for more than 50 years, Whitehead Institute researchers have only now solved the mystery of how cells correctly align their chromosomes during symmetric ...

Starve a virus, feed a cure? Findings show how some cells protect themselves against HIV

A protein that protects some of our immune cells from the most common and virulent form of HIV works by starving the virus of the molecular building blocks that it needs to replicate, according to research published online ...

Researchers find extensive RNA editing in human transcriptome

In a new study published online in Nature Biotechnology, researchers from BGI, the world's largest genomics organization, reported the evidence of extensive RNA editing in a human cell line by analysis of RNA-seq data, demons ...

The proteins ensuring genome protection

Researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, have discovered the crucial role of two proteins in developing a cell 'anti-enzyme shield'. This protection system, which operates at the level of molecular ...