CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Endeavours astronauts will scramble to stow a crane carrier in shuttles cargo bay Saturday in a bid to depart the International Space Station before a Russian crew that includes "space tourist" Dennis Tito arrives at the outpost.
With the American millionaire and two veteran cosmonauts onboard, the crews Soyuz space taxi remains scheduled for launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan about 3:30 a.m. EDT (07:30 GMT) Saturday.
NASA late Friday dropped efforts to convince the Russians to delay the launch. The U.S. space agency had requested extra time to fix ongoing computer problems on the outpost.
The Russians, however, did agree to delay a scheduled 4 a.m. EDT (08:00 GMT) Soyuz docking at the station if NASA ultimately needs more time to troubleshoot the computer problems.
The bug-shaped Russian spacecraft is capable of loitering in orbit for about 24 to 36 hours if need be, NASA officials said.
The decision to proceed with the Soyuz launch, meanwhile, came on the heels of lengthy transoceanic telephone negotiations that appeared to strain already tense relations between NASA and its Russian station partners.
But NASA deputy station manager Bill Gerstenmaier said that Russian project officials have supported the computer troubleshooting efforts. And he added that the Russian proposal to delay the Soyuz docking if necessary gives NASA the flexibility it needs to finish that work.
"I dont think its that symptomatic of a major problem between us," Gerstenmaier said in a news briefing late Friday.
"We both recognized the difficulties we each had and we were looking at mutual ways to fix those problems between both of us," he said. "So it may appear strained from the outside looking in, but from the inside, technically I think were working together very well."
A delayed Soyuz docking, meanwhile, could become reality if U.S. ground engineers fail to quickly fix two of three station command-and-control computers that remain off line.
All three of the computers inexplicably failed earlier this week, stalling the shuttle crews work aboard the outpost. Only one of those since has been brought on line, but the Endeavour astronauts still placed a trash-filled Italian moving van in the shuttles bay Friday.
The shuttle-borne cargo carrier was used to deliver about 3 tons of supplies and equipment to the station crew, which includes Russian commander Yuri Usachev and U.S. flight engineers Susan Helms and Jim Voss.
About a ton of garbage and surplus station gear then was loaded into the Italian freighter before Endeavour mission specialist Scott Parazynski used the shuttles robot arm to deposit it back in the ships cargo bay.
At least one of the main station control computers was needed to send commands to release latches and bolts that held the cargo carrier to the stations Unity module.
NASA had wanted to have two of the computers running for that operation. In order to get the job done Friday, though, they gave the crew a go-ahead to carry out the work with a spare laptop serving as a temporary backup.
NASA officials, however, say at least two of the three computers will have to be running before the shuttle crew is given a green light for its next job.
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