Endeavour's seven
crewmembers jetted into Kennedy Space Center on Sunday, less than three weeks
before their planned Nov. 14 liftoff to the International Space Station.
The crew's three days of
training culminate Wednesday in a launch countdown rehearsal, strapped
into the shuttle in orange launch-and-entry spacesuits.
"We're glad to be
here," said Chris Ferguson, the mission's commander.
Ferguson's crew stood at
his side in blue flight suits: Pilot Eric Boe and mission specialists Steve
Bowen, Shane Kimbrough, Sandra Magnus, Donald Pettit and Heidemarie
Stefanyshyn-Piper.
Boe, Bowen and Kimbrough
are rookie space flyers, while the others have flown one mission. Pettit spent
more than 160 days in space as a member of the station's Expedition 6 crew in
2002-03.
The astronauts arrived from
Houston by 3:45 p.m. EDT (1945 GMT) in five T-38 training jets. The flights
help some astronauts maintain pilot certifications and test crewmembers' teamwork
under real flight conditions.
Ferguson and Boe
immediately began practicing landings in Gulfstream jets called Shuttle
Training Aircraft, whose controls have been modified to simulate the shuttle's
handling on sharply angled descents.
Today, the crew will learn
to drive an M113 tank they would ride to safety if an emergency forced them to
flee the launch pad.
In a brief address to
assembled news media, Ferguson outlined the 15-day mission's top
three goals.
First, he said, is to
deliver Magnus to the station so she can join two Expedition 18 crewmates
ferried to the station earlier this month by a Russian Soyuz vehicle.
Expedition 17 astronaut Greg Chamitoff will ride home on Endeavour in her
place.
Second, under Pettit's
guidance, roughly 18,000 pounds of supplies and furnishings will be unloaded
from the shuttle. That gear will allow the station to double
its crews from three to six people.
And finally, during four
spacewalks, Boe, Bowen and Stefanyshyn-Piper will clean and lubricate rotating
joints that allow the station's power-generating solar arrays to track the sun.
The crew arrived for its
countdown practice, known as the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test, a
little more than a month after Atlantis astronauts went through the same
routine.
But that crew saw its
mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope postponed until next year because
of computer problems aboard the observatory.
Ferguson said Sunday's
flights to Cape Canaveral through cloudless skies were a pleasure, and he hoped
it boded well for Endeavour's upcoming launch.
"We hope for weather like
this when we come out for the real thing," he said.
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