CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Summer has barely begun in the northern hemisphere, yet for three humans about to be launched into orbit this week aboard NASA's shuttle Endeavour, the season is all but over.
Valery Korzun, Sergei Treschev and Peggy Whitson -- collectively known as the Expedition Five crew -- are preparing to depart the planet from the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday for a nearly five-month tour of duty at the International Space Station (ISS). There they will conduct 25 science investigations and assist in the construction of the frontier outpost.
They will replace the Expedition Four crew that spent the past six months living and working aboard the multinational complex. That crew -- Yuri Onufrienko, Carl Walz and Dan Bursch -- will return to Earth on Endeavour when its mission is complete.
So instead of summer's warm sunshine and gentle breezes the trio of two Russians and one American will have to endure the sterile atmosphere and controlled weather inside the collection of pressurized modules for a planned 135 days.
For Whitson, 42, an Iowa native with a reputation for a green thumb, her first spaceflight demands she watch the entire growing season from 245 miles (394 kilometers) up, where from that distance it will be decidedly difficult to tell if the sweet corn has grown knee high by the Fourth of July.
"I don't know if we can tell if it's knee high or not, but I do think we can monitor the vegetation and its growth (across the entire continent)," Whitson said. There are formal scientific investigations planned during their flight that call for observing seasonal changes in features such as coral reefs or the way river deltas are affected by urbanization.But first they will have to get into space.
That could prove difficult depending on how well the same summer weather cooperates with NASA's plans to ignite Endeavour's three main engines and twin solid rocket boosters Thursday between 4 and 8 p.m. EDT (2000 and 2400 GMT).
Shuttle launch weather officer Kathy Winters said Tuesday there is a 40 percent chance that conditions will be acceptable for the shuttle to fly. Afternoon thunderstorms -- a staple of Florida's summer weather -- are expected to kick in around launch time and threaten the space agency's plan.
Conditions deteriorate a little more Friday, when the chance of acceptable weather is only 30 percent, Winters said.
As soon as they are able to dodge the disturbed weather, the Expedition Five crew, along with the rest of the shuttle crew will be sent into orbit to begin an extremely full flight plan. Endeavour's crew includes Ken Cockrell, Paul Lockhart, Philippe Perin and Franklin Chang-Diaz.
"We will have a very tight schedule during our flight and it will be an interesting time for us," said Korzun, 49, a veteran cosmonaut who served 197 days aboard the Russian space station Mir in 1996-1997. Korzun was aboard Mir when a fire broke out aboard the station and nearly forced the crew to abandon ship.
If Endeavour launches Thursday, the shuttle is to dock with the ISS Saturday and by the end of the day the Expedition Four and Expedition Five crews will have officially swapped places. As a result, if there were an emergency, the Expedition Four crew would return to Earth aboard Endeavour, while the Expedition Five crew would bailout using the Soyuz lifeboat.
At that point, Korzun as outpost commander might want to consider changing the radio call sign of the complex from Space Station Alpha to Grand Central Station. The reason: During the next four months the station will be hopping with departures and arrivals.
Among the highlights:
During this entire period, the station crew is to manage 25 science investigations and log some 230 hours of experiment time. Much of the research will completed using two new racks of equipment that is to be carried up inside the Leonardo module and delivered to the Destiny science laboratory.
"We've got a lot of science to entertain us along the way, so we're very excited about the flight," Whitson said.
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