This story was updated at 5:30 a.m. ET.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The cloudy predawn sky above Florida ignited into a spectacular blaze Tuesday as NASA's shuttle
Endeavour roared into a high-speed pursuit of the International Space Station
(ISS).
Endeavour and its seven-astronaut
crew successfully left Earth at 2:28 a.m. EDT (0628 GMT), riding a towering column of white
smoke in a rare night liftoff from Launch Pad 39A here at Kennedy Space Center. Led by commander
Dominic Gorie, the STS-123
mission crew is now poised to catch up to the space station Wednesday night.
"God's
truly blessed us with a beautiful night here," Gorie said minutes before
Endeavour rumbled spaceward. "Let's light 'em up and give them a show."
During their planned
16-day mission — the longest station-bound flight yet — the crew will
perform no less than five spacewalks to install a giant Canadian robot, deliver
the first piece of Japan's school bus-sized Kibo laboratory and conduct a
series of on-orbit science experiments.
Riding aboard the orbiter
with Gorie are pilot Gregory H. Johnson, mission specialists Robert Behnken,
Mike Foreman, Rick Linnehan, Garrett Reisman and Japanese astronaut Takao Doi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The launch marks the first spaceflight Johnson, Behnken, Foreman and Reisman.
Reisman will stay aboard the ISS as a member of the Expedition 16 and 17 space
station crews. He will relieve European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut
Leopold Eyharts, who will return home on board Endeavour.
"He is our most
precious payload," Johnson said of Reisman prior to launch. "We're
taking him to the space station and we're going to leave him there."
Special
delivery
When
Endeavour docks at the space station late Wednesday, the crew will quickly get to
work by retrieving pieces of a massive
robot named Dextre with the shuttle's robotic arm.
Astronauts are
slated to spend two spacewalking days assembling the 1.72-ton robot, which will
use two 11-foot (3.4-meter) arms, gripper-like "hands" and a tool
belt to gently replace failed components outside the space station. The Canadian Space Agency built the new robot to help relieve station astronauts of the more routine maintenance work outside the ISS.
"Dextre
is 'Gigantor the Space Age Robot,' is what I think," said Linnehan, who will
partake in the device's assembly. "He's massive and crawls around the
station. He's got two big arms and he's got all these appendages and tools to
plug in. It's pretty wild."
Before Dextre is put together outside of the ISS, however, astronauts willinstall the Japanese Logistics Pressurized (JLP) module — that nation's
first room in space, and the first of three Kibo laboratory components.
"For
the first time we'll have representatives from four nations; from Russia, from the U.S., from Europe and from Japan," Doi said of the JLP's installation, calling
his own participation a dream come true. "Some people have been working on
this program more than 25 years, it's just unbelievable."
The STS-123
crew will also spend two other days outside the airlock to test heat-resistant tile
repair methods and replace bearings in a damaged solar array joint.
Beacon in the night
Today's successful liftoff is
the second of six flights NASA planned for an ambitious 2008 launch schedule,
and marks the 122nd space shuttle mission, the 25th flight to the space station
and Endeavour's 21st launch.
The predawn launch is only
the second after-dark flight in five years — the latest was shuttle Discovery's
launch in late 2006. NASA temporarily halted night launches because it's
difficult to spot errant chunks of ice or insulation that can shed from the external fuel tank.
Such debris can damage the
heat-resistant underbelly of a space shuttle, but Endeavour is using a new
camera flash system for the first time that will help technicians better
examine the shuttle's disposable 15-story tank after launch.
"We're somewhat
hampered because of the night launch," LeRoy Cain, chair of NASA's mission
management team Sunday, but noted that the flash unit should be a boon to
post-launch inspections. "I think it should be pretty spectacular."
Orbital inspection
Perhaps more importantly, however,
astronauts will scope for thermal shield damage with the space shuttle's
sensor-tipped inspection boom.
"That's where we
really verify that the orbiter is safe to come home," Cain said.
STS-123 astronauts will
unberth the 50-foot (15-meter) boom Tuesday evening and begin an eight-hour
inspection of the shuttle's wing leading edges and nose cap, which absorb most of
the heat of atmospheric reentry. Space station crew will also photograph the
orbiter's underside shortly before the spacecraft docks at the orbital outpost.
Endeavour is slated to arrive at the space station late Wednesday at 11:27 p.m. EDT (0327 GMT March
13) and return to Earth the evening of March 26.
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