WASHINGTON -
The seven-astronaut crew of NASA's shuttle Endeavour is gearing up for the
longest construction mission ever aimed at the International Space Station
(ISS), where spaceflyers will add a Japanese-built room and a Canadian robot to
the growing orbiting laboratory.
Endeavour's
STS-123 crew is on track for a March 11 launch toward the station from NASA's
Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., to begin a marathon
construction flight expected to last about 16 days.
"We are ready
to fly this mission in another week," said shuttle commander Dominic Gorie, a three-time
spaceflyer, in a Monday briefing at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"We've got everything on this mission that you can imagine."
Gorie and
his crew are planning to launch - and land - in darkness, bookending a busy
construction flight that includes five spacewalks to assemble the Canadian
Space Agency's two-armed robot Dextre, install the first segment of Japan's
massive Kibo laboratory, test a shuttle heat shield repair method and deliver
spare parts to the ISS. Two new international control centers, in France and
Japan, respectively, will begin operations during the mission to activate the
Kibo component and prepare for the arrival Europe's maiden
ISS cargo ship Jules Verne.
"We have a
very international flavor on this flight," said Mike Moses, NASA's lead shuttle
flight director for Endeavour's mission. "It's going to be a busy, packed
flight."
Part of
that international flavor comes in the form of Japanese astronaut Takao Doi, a
veteran spaceflyer who will help deliver the storage room for his country's
Kibo laboratory, dubbed the Japanese Logistics Pressurized module, to the ISS
for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Japan's
Kibo facility consists of a storage pod, a massive pressurized laboratory
and an external platform equipped with its own robotic arm. The country is the
only remaining major ISS contributor waiting to launch its first modules into
space.
"I feel
honored that I get to be one of the first people to get to go into the JLP," said
Doi. "Some people have been working on this program for more than 25 years,
which is unbelievable."
Endeavour's
STS-123 mission will mark NASA's second of up to six shuttle flights, five of
them geared toward ISS construction, scheduled for this year.
The planned
spaceflight comes just weeks after the successful
Feb. 20 return of the shuttle Atlantis, which delivered the European Space
Agency's (ESA) Columbus lab and French astronaut Leopold Eyharts to the
station. Eyharts will return to Earth aboard Endeavour after the shuttle
ferries his replacement - U.S. astronaut Garrett Reisman - to the ISS.
Other
tasks
In addition
to delivering the Japanese module and Dextre, which is designed to replace
spacewalking astronauts for some of simpler ISS exterior maintenance tasks,
Endeavour's crew will test a shuttle heat shield repair technique that uses a
caulk gun-like tool to squirt a pink, heat-resistant goo into damaged tiles to
see how it behaves in space.
The repair
method, one of several developed after heat shield damage led to the 2003 loss
of seven astronauts aboard Columbia yet to be tested in space, has not yet been
tested in the weightless vacuum of space. Engineers have found that bubbles in
the material tend to rise to the top during vacuum chamber runs on Earth and
expect some bubbling during the orbital test.
"I would be
very surprised if we had something that was totally unexpected," NASA's space shuttle program chief John Shannon told reporters.
Spacewalkers
will also return to the space station's ailing
starboard solar wing joint, a 10-foot (3-meter) wide gear contaminated with
metallic grit that has hindered its ability to rotate outboard solar arrays
like a paddle wheel to track the sun. While NASA engineers believe the glitch
can be repaired late this year without affecting ongoing construction, they
hope to complete a full inspection of the gear that began in late October.
During the
mission's fifth spacewalk, astronauts will also store Endeavour's sensor-tipped
inspection boom used to scan their shuttle's heat shield for any signs of
damage after launch and before landing. The astronauts will conduct a modified pre-landing
heat survey while docked at the station before stowing the boom for the shuttle
Discovery, which is unable to carry its own boom in addition to the Kibo lab's massive,
tour bus-sized main segment when it launches in late May.
Orbital
traffic
NASA hopes
to launch Endeavour on either March 11 or March 12, before having to stand down
for the launch of a navigation satellite atop an unmanned Delta 2 rocket. The
shuttle must fly before March 23 to complete its mission in time for Russia's
planned April 8 launch of a Soyuz rocket carrying the station's next crew and
South Korea's first astronauts.
But before
Endeavour lifts off, European space officials hope to launch Jules Verne on a
shakedown cruise that will eventually end with an early April docking at the
ISS. The mission was initially slated to launch late March 8 EST, but ESA
officials delayed the space shot by 24 hours earlier today to allow final
checks on the spacecraft.
Kirk
Shireman, NASA's deputy ISS program manager, said ESA will attempt to launch
Jules Verne on March 9 and March 10, but would stand down on Endeavour's launch
day to clear communication satellite traffic for the shuttle's liftoff.
"We're
thinking about launching an air traffic control here pretty soon just to keep
it all straight," Shireman said.
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