By Calvin Palmer
Space shuttle Endeavour and its seven astronauts blasted off into the Florida sky last night on a mission to improve the facilities of the International Space Station.
The shuttle lifted off NASA’s Kennedy Space Center launch pad at Cape Canaveral at 7:55 p.m. last night on a 15-day mission devoted to transforming the space station so that its crew can be doubled to six.
The astronauts are expected to reach the space station around 4:00 p.m. on Sunday. They plan to equip the station with a new bathroom, kitchen, a pair of additional bedrooms and a $250 million recycling device that reclaims drinking water from urine and other wastes.
“It’s our turn to take home improvement to a new level,” Endeavour commander Capt. Chris Ferguson told Launch Control moments from liftoff. “Endeavour is ready to go!”
Ferguson’s crew includes pilot Col. Eric Boe, flight engineer Capt. Steve Bowen and robot arm operator Dr. Don Pettit. Capt. Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper leads a spacewalk team that includes Bowen and Lt. Col. Shane Kimbrough.
Dr. Sandy Magnus will move aboard the station, remaining through February to activate the water recycler. She replaces Greg Chamitoff, who is to return to Earth aboard Endeavour after six months on the station.
While their colleagues carry out the interior improvements to the station, Stefanyshyn-Piper will lead efforts by the spacewalkers to restore the ailing solar panels that generate electricity.
In late 2007, NASA engineers noticed a problem. The mechanism that rotates the outstretched solar panels on the station’s right side was crumbling.
During four spacewalks, Stefanyshyn-Piper, Bowen and Kimbrough will scrape up metal shavings trapped in the damaged mechanism, then lubricate it to prevent future damage.
“It’s very challenging,” said Stefanyshyn-Piper. “There is so much equipment we are taking out. We have to be very organized. If we aren’t, things will get all over the place, and that will just slow us down.”
The shuttle program will end in 2010.
[Based on reports by The New York Times and the Houston Chronicle.]
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