NASA Discusses Shuttle Endeavour's March Launch Plan

NASA mission managers are expected to set a definitive launch date today for the shuttle Endeavour to haul two new additions to the International Space Station (ISS).

Shuttle program managers and engineers are wrapping up a two-day meeting at NASA?s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., to determine whether Endeavour is ready for a planned March 11 launch.

NASA spokesperson Kyle Herring told SPACE.com Thursday that the meeting, a traditional Flight Readiness Review that precedes every shuttle flight, was going well. Mission managers are expected to announce their decision during a press briefing to begin no earlier than 2:00 p.m. EST (1900 GMT) today on NASA TV.

Commanded by three-time spaceflyer Dominic Gorie, Endeavour?s STS-123 mission will mark NASA?s second shuttle flight dedicated to station construction this year. It comes just weeks after the successful Feb. 20 return of the shuttle Atlantis, which delivered Europe?s during a 13-day spaceflight.

Gorie and his crew are slated to launch at 2:28 a.m. EDT (0628 GMT) on March 11 on a 16-day mission to the space station, where they will stage five spacewalks to install the first component of Japan?s massive Kibo laboratory and a Canadian-built robot on the orbiting outpost?s exterior.

NASA hopes to launch Endeavour by March 23 to avoid conflicts with other spacecraft also headed for the ISS in the next few weeks.

The unmanned cargo ship Jules Verne, the European Space Agency?s first Automated Transfer Vehicle, is due launch toward the station from Kourou, French Guiana on March 7. But the spacecraft?s inaugural flight calls for a series of shakedown tests, and will dock at the ISS after Endeavour departs.

Russia?s Federal Space Agency, meanwhile, is gearing up for the planned April 8 launch of a Soyuz spacecraft that will ferry a new crew and Ko San, South Korea?s first astronaut, to the space station. That mission, to lift off from the Central Asian spaceport of Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, will kick off a crew change that will end with the April 19 landing of Ko and two members of the station?s current Expedition 16 crew.

NASA will hold a press briefing no earlier than 2:00 p.m. EST (1900 GMT) on NASA TV to discuss today's Flight Readiness Review meeting for Atlantis' STS-123 shuttle mission. Click here for SPACE.com's shuttle mission coverage and NASA TV feed.

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