Endeavour's crew:
Kevin Kregel - commander
Though he's responsible for everything good and bad that happens aboard Endeavour during the mission, this veteran of three shuttle flights thinks he's got it made.
"Actually, the commander has the easiest job," he says with a smile. "He just delegates and makes sure the job gets done."
He added he thinks is job is easier because the crew is motivated and well trained.
Kregel, 43, was an Air Force test pilot before leaving the service to join NASA in 1990. He was selected as an astronaut candidate in 1992.
He said his early motivation to fly in space developed when he lived on Long Island, New York -- not too far from where the Apollo lunar modules were built in the 1960s by Grumman.
Dom Gorie - pilot
Navy Cmdr. Dom Gorie has gone from flying fighters in Desert Storm to test flying high performance aircraft to piloting the space shuttle.
He took in all in stride when he explained some of his other duties aboard Endeavour and his second trip into space.
"I consider myself pretty much the common man on this flight," he said jokingly. "I take care of the toilet and the air conditioning and that sort of thing."
When he's not doing in-orbit household chores, the 42-year-old shuttle pilot will delicately maneuver Endeavour periodically to keep the its altitude constant all the while avoiding damaging the 200-foot (60-meter) radar mast attached to the craft.
During ascent and descent, Gorie's responsibilities include the shuttle's main engines, hydraulics and electrical systems.
Janice Voss - payload commander/mission specialist
Janice Voss credits her interest in space to reading Madeleine L'Engel's A Wrinkle in Time in her youth. Since then she's kept reading science fiction and has carried books on her four previous flights into space.
On this flight, she's carrying A Man on the Moon by Andy Chaikin, space.com's executive editor for space and science, and Homer Hickam's Rocket Boys.
Voss, 43, acts as payload commander for the flight and is one of the shift leaders during the round-the-clock radar operations. As payload commander she is responsible for procedures and how the crew operates the system.
She has a doctorate in both aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Janet Kavandi - mission specialist
Kavandi makes her second flight into space. This mission is also her second trip with pilot Dom Gorie. She and Gerhard Thiele are trained to make a spacewalk if anything should go wrong with the 200-foot (60-meter) radar mast or payload.
In an almost worse case scenario, Kavandi, 40, and Thiele will have to turn a hand ratchet more than 20,000 times to extend the mast. :"We'll sure earn our pay that day," she said at the prospect of the arduous task.
As a child, space travel and astronomy fascinated her, but it was her chemistry teacher who got her interested in that subject, which eventually led to a doctorate from the University of Washington, Seattle.
Space travel remained a dream since there were no women in the U.S. space program when she was growing up. Then things changed.
"As we got into the space shuttle program, they started taking women and scientists instead of test pilots," she said. "That's when I decided to try my hand at it and apply."
Mamoru Mohri - mission specialist
Mamoru Mohri may not be a household name in the United States, but in Japan people stop him on the street and ask for his autograph.
"I don't mind it so much," he said. "It does bother my family when we eat in a restaurant though."
Mohri, 51, the first Japanese astronaut to fly in the shuttle, attributes it to his nation's enthusiasm for the space program.
He flew aboard Endeavour in 1992 and conducted experiments in life science and materials processing. He said in a recent interview that he was so busy on that flight that he often forgot to look out the window. This time, he says, he'll take more opportunities to look at the Earth.
Mohri holds a doctorate in chemistry from Flinders University of South Australia.
Gerhard Thiele - mission specialist
Thiele, 46, makes his first flight into space, but has been an astronaut since 1987. He began training with the German Aerospace Research Center, and in 1990 was a backup payload specialist for a 1993 mission. He reported to Johnson Space Center (JSC) in 1996 as an European Space Agency astronaut.
He and Janet Kavandi are prepared to do a spacewalk should the 200-foot (60-meter) mast not deploy or have problems. He said spacewalk training is probably his favorite part of the mission specialist program, particularly the time spent the JSC's 40-foot pool, better known as the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory.
Thiele said his dreams of space flight began as a boy when he watched John Young and Gus Grissom's flight aboard Gemini 3 in 1965. There was no space program in Germany at the time.
"When I saw it, that really caught me and I thought 'this is what you want to do,'" he said. "It was one of those dreams where the grown-ups smile at you and say 'This is such a great dream, but it's not going to happen.'"
He said he also has a message for young people.
"My message to children and students would be to dare to dream your dreams," Thiele said. "Your life will take turns and twists that you cannot foresee and dreams can come true."
Thiele has a doctorate in physics from Universität Heidelberg.
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