Astronauts eager for longest construction flight

By Tariq Malik

updated 12:42 p.m. ET March 4, 2008

WASHINGTON - The seven-astronaut crew of NASA's shuttle Endeavour is gearing up for the longest construction mission ever aimed at the international space station, where space fliers will add a Japanese-built room and a Canadian robot to the growing orbiting laboratory.

Endeavour's STS-123 crew is on track for a March 11 launch toward the station from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., to begin a marathon construction flight expected to last about 16 days.

"We are ready to fly this mission in another week," said shuttle commander Dominic Gorie, a three-time spaceflier, in a Monday briefing at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "We've got everything on this mission that you can imagine."

Gorie and his crew are planning to launch — and land — in darkness, bookending a busy construction flight that includes five spacewalks to assemble the Canadian Space Agency's two-armed robot Dextre, install the first segment of Japan's massive Kibo laboratory, test a shuttle heat shield repair method and deliver spare parts to the ISS. Two new international control centers, in France and Japan, respectively, will begin operations during the mission to activate the Kibo component and prepare for the arrival of Europe's maiden ISS cargo ship Jules Verne.

"We have a very international flavor on this flight," said Mike Moses, NASA's lead shuttle flight director for Endeavour's mission. "It's going to be a busy, packed flight."

Part of that international flavor comes in the form of Japanese astronaut Takao Doi, a veteran spaceflier who will help deliver the storage room for his country's Kibo laboratory, dubbed the Japanese Logistics Pressurized module, to the ISS for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Japan's Kibo facility consists of a storage pod, a massive pressurized laboratory and an external platform equipped with its own robotic arm. The country is the only remaining major ISS contributor waiting to launch its first modules into space.

"I feel honored that I get to be one of the first people to get to go into the JLP," said Doi. "Some people have been working on this program for more than 25 years, which is unbelievable."

Endeavour's STS-123 mission will mark NASA's second of up to six shuttle flights, five of them geared toward ISS construction, scheduled for this year.

The planned spaceflight comes just weeks after the successful Feb. 20 return of the shuttle Atlantis, which delivered the European Space Agency's (ESA) Columbus lab and French astronaut Leopold Eyharts to the station. Eyharts will return to Earth aboard Endeavour after the shuttle ferries his replacement — U.S. astronaut Garrett Reisman — to the ISS.

MORE FROM SPACE

Space Section Front

Countdown begins for NASA's uncertain future Cosmic Log: Inside the space debate Device like ‘Star Trek’ replicator is in the works Study reveals identity of a puzzling star Water geysers on Saturn moon take center stage Cosmic Log: Beam me up ... for a prize! Space junk storm will be costly, experts predict India’s space ambitions take off NASA probe sees changing seasons on Mercury   Month in space: What a blast! Space Section Front   Add Space headlines to your news reader: