CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Shuttle Endeavour hauled the International Space Station into a higher orbit Sunday while 10 astronauts and cosmonauts prepared to pay tribute to thousands of people who lost their lives in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America.
In the first of at least three orbit-raising maneuvers, shuttle skipper Dom Gorie and pilot Mark Kelly carried out an hour-long series of thruster firings, boosting the 17-story station into an orbit with a high point of 243.5 miles (389.6 kilometers).
"That re-boost added about two miles to the altitude of the station," NASA flight commentator John Ira Petty said from the agency's Mission Control Center in Houston.
The other eight astronauts and cosmonauts, meanwhile, continued unloading an Italian moving van that was temporarily mounted Saturday to an Earth-facing berthing port on the station's American-made Unity module.
Video beamed back from the outpost Sunday showed the space travelers floating within the cylindrical cargo carrier, passing supply-filled bags to colleagues inside the Unity module.
The so-called Multipurpose Logistics Module is filled with 3.5 tons of food, clothing, supplies and equipment for new station commander Yuri Onufrienko and his two American colleagues, Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz.
Known as the Expedition Four crew, the trio took up residence on the station Saturday and plan to live and work aboard the outpost until mid-May, carrying out science experiments and overseeing the delivery and installation of an outpost truss segment. The three veteran space fliers are replacing outgoing station skipper Frank Culbertson and two Russian cosmonauts -- Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Turin. Onboard the station since August, the Expedition Three crew will ride home on Endeavour after a four-month station tour.
The joined station and shuttle crews plan to take time out from their moving chores Sunday to honor those killed after suicide hijackers crashed commercial airliners into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and rural Pennsylvania.
A commemorative ceremony aboard the linked shuttle-station complex will be broadcast on NASA TV at 5:24 p.m. EST (2224 GMT).
Likely to be noted will be the fact that Endeavour is carrying a host of items as part of a memorial tribute to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, including small American flags that will be distributed to surviving family members after the shuttle returns to Earth.
Also onboard the shuttle: the shields of the 23 New York City police officers killed responding to the attack as well as a poster bearing the pictures of the 343 New York firefighters who lost their lives.
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Endeavour commander Gorie said flying the items "was the exact, right thing to do."
"To be able to take special items for the people that were affected, both the folks that were killed in the attacks and their families, it's just a significant sign from all of us in NASA and the space program that we hold those people in our highest thoughts," he said.
"To carry items that memorialize them aboard the space shuttle is probably the most significant thing we could have done to help the recovery process."
Endeavour is scheduled to depart the station next Friday, although the shuttle's stay at the station might be extended a day. As it stands, the shuttle astronauts and the Expedition Three crew are due to land at Kennedy Space Center at 12:28 p.m. EST (1728 GMT) Dec. 16.
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