Upcoming Status on Endeavour’s Space Mission
This coming Friday, February 29th, the NASA managers are planning on scheduling a public media conference to discuss whether or not the space shuttle Endeavour will be departing on its STS-123 mission. Prior to this, the Flight Readiness Review–a two-day meeting assessing preparations of the shuttle’s mission–was held for the managers to discuss the situation.
The review on both Thursday and Friday will include the selection of an official launch date for the Endeavour, which so far is March 11, 2:28 a.m. EDT. Participants involved in the review are: Associate Administrator for Space Operations Bill Gerstenmaier, Space Shuttle Program Manager John Shannon, and Space Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach. The best place for the broadcast is the NASA Television and the NASA web site.
Once the Endeavour gets off the ground toward the International Space Station, the Japanese Kibo Logistics Module and the Canadian Dextre robotics system will be an added feature to the already present ESA Columbus Laboratory and the Harmony Node 2 from the recent mission of the Atlantis. NASA Astronaut Garrett Reisman will be delivered to the International Space Station complex, while the European Space Agency astronaut Leopold Eyharts to Earth.
The 25th space shuttle mission to the ISS, right after this one will be the space shuttle’s Discovery STS-124 mission. New components of the Japanese Kibo will be taken up to the ISS, where the Japanese Pressurized Module will be installed and outfitted with a new robotic arm–the Japanese Remote Manipulator System.
The STS-124 mission is the second of three flights coming up, all launching new components to complete the Kibo laboratory. The STS-124 includes two spacewalks to install the new lab and its remote manipulator system. Attached permanently to the new lab in STS-124, the lab’s logistics module will be attached temporarily in the upcoming Endeavour mission STS-123.
This entry was posted on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 at 12:03 pm and is filed under Mission Objectives, Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
