The space
shuttle Endeavour is set for a Nov. 14 launch toward the International
Space Station, where astronauts hope to deliver new gear that will prime the
orbital outpost for double-sized crews, top NASA officials announced late
Thursday.
Endeavour
is slated to rocket toward the space station at 7:55 p.m. EST (0055 Nov. 15
GMT) on a 15-day
mission to deliver a new crewmember and equipment that will help boost the
outpost up to six-person crews. The spaceflight will mark NASA's fourth shuttle
flight of the year, the most since 2002.
"We're in
very good shape to go fly," said NASA shuttle program manager John Shannon in a
status briefing. "We're really looking forward to getting back into orbit."
Earlier
today, NASA officials also announced
a new delay to a separate shuttle mission, the STS-125 flight of the Atlantis
orbiter, to launch a seven-astronaut crew on the last
service call to the Hubble Space Telescope. That mission was slated to fly
in February after a data relay glitch aboard the telescope thwarted plans for
an Oct. 14 blast off.
Hubble engineers
successfully switched the space telescope to a backup data relay system and, earlier today,
released the first
new image from the observatory since the Sept. 27 malfunction. But problems with a
spare unit NASA hoped to launch aboard Atlantis to fix the ailing system for
good will add months of extra checks and tests, mission managers said.
Meanwhile,
Endeavour will launch as planned with its own seven-astronaut crew.
Commanded
by veteran astronaut Chris Ferguson, Endeavour's STS-126 crew is slated to
blast off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., with a
payload bay packed with a second space station kitchen, spare bathroom, new
sleeping compartments, extra gym equipment and a water recycling system. The
new gear is due to be installed and tested over the next few months to allow
the station to double its current three-person crew size in mid-2009.
"This is an
extremely complicated mission for us," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's space
operations chief.
Ferguson
and his crew also plan to perform four spacewalks during the mission, which are
primarily aimed at cleaning and greasing up a balky solar array joint on the
station's starboard side. The joint, which has been damaged by bits of metal
grit, is one of two designed to spin the station's outboard U.S.-built solar arrays like
paddlewheels so they always face the Sun as the station orbits the Earth.
Set to
launch with Ferguson next month are shuttle pilot Eric Boe and mission
specialists Don Petit, Steve Bowen, Heidi Stefanyshyn-Piper, Shane Kimbrough
and Sandra Magnus. Boe, Bowen and Kimbrough will make their first trips to
space during the mission.
Magnus,
however, plans a much longer stay in orbit than her crewmates. She will replace
fellow NASA astronaut Gregory Chamitoff, who launched toward the station last
June, as a member of the outpost's Expedition 18 crew until her own replacement
arrives in March.
"When we
get six people up there, I think it's big enough that it still won't feel very
crowded," Magnus said of helping to double the station's crew size. "But this
will be very exciting."
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