CAPE
CANAVERAL, Fla. - The brilliant blaze of NASA's space shuttle Endeavour as it
rocketed into orbit under the light of a nearly full moon late Friday is just the
beginning of a challenging, but vital, flight to the International Space
Station (ISS) , mission managers said.
Endeavour launched
toward the space station at 7:55 p.m. EST (0055 Nov 15 GMT) carrying a
new station crewmember and a cargo pod filled with new life support gear to
prime the orbiting laboratory to accommodate larger crews.
"Very few
things that we do beat a night launch," said LeRoy Cain, head Endeavour's
STS-126 mission management team. "It was just remarkable right up and down the
line."
But Endeavour's
blast off is just the start of what promises to be a long, hard flight to
outfit the space station and make repairs that will pave the way for larger,
six-person crews to the outpost next year.
Commanded
by veteran spaceflyer Chris Ferguson, Endeavour's STS-126 crew is hauling
a cargo module laden with a second kitchen, extra bathroom, new exercise
gear, two refrigerator-sized sleeping cabins and a vital recycling system
designed to turn astronaut urine and sweat into drinking water. The planned
15-day mission includes four spacewalks, all of them aimed at cleaning and
lubricating a damaged solar array gear on the station's starboard side.
Endeavour's
crew is also ferrying American astronaut Sandra Magnus to the space station,
where she expects to replace fellow NASA spaceflyer Greg Chamitoff as a flight
engineer with the outpost's three-person Expedition 18 crew.
Chamitoff watched
Endeavour blast off live via a video feed piped up from Mission Control in Houston
as the station flew 220 miles (354 km) above the Southern Pacific Ocean. He
cheered alongside the station's American commander Michael Fincke and Russian
flight engineer Yury Lonchakov in NASA video recorded aboard the station. The
broadcast and launch came on a day that already saw another spacecraft, Russia's
unmanned cargo ship Progress 30, undock from the space station for disposal in
Earth's atmosphere.
"The ISS
team is ready to go to work," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's space operations
chief, after the launch. "There's more hours required to do the work than we
have in the timeline."
Cain said
that the on-time launch of Endeavour makes it more likely mission managers may
extend the mission by one day to give shuttle and station astronauts extra time
to complete their mission.
"I anticipate
we will be able to and we will make a decision to extend," Cain said. But that
decision, he added, will have to wait until after all four of the mission's
complicated spacewalks are complete and engineers are sure Endeavour has enough
supplies to remain in orbit an extra day.
Endeavour's
launch marked the 31st nighttime liftoff in NASA's 124-shuttle flight history and
was made more spectacular by a nearly full moon, mission managers said. The
sight seemed symbolic to some as the agency prepares to fly nine more shuttle
missions after Endeavour's before retiring the fleet in 2010 and replacing it
with capsule-based Orion spacecraft by 2015.
"As you saw
today we arranged to have the moon out there, and that's so you can see the
shuttle launching," Gerstenmaier said. "As it went past the moon, that's
the perfect analogy of transition."
About the
only hitch in Endeavour's Friday night launch came just minutes before liftoff,
when an eagle-eyed flight controller found that the door-like metal framework
designed to form a seal around the hatch to the shuttle's cabin at the launch
pad was not secured properly.
NASA launch
director Mike Leinbach said engineers were initially worried that vibrations
from the shuttle's rocket engines could cause the framework to shake and swing,
posing an impact risk to Endeavour's side. But they ultimately found that a
nearby handrail would prevent such an impact and went ahead with the launch.
The quality
inspector who forgot to secure the metal frame in place was quick to take
responsibility for the error, Leinbach said.
"It's a testament
to the team that when we do know that we've made a mistake, we own up to it and
we go out and we fix that," he added. "And I guarantee you we will never see
that issue again."
After Endeavour's liftoff, Mission Control radioed up to the shuttle crew to report that an initial look at launch imagery caught two pieces of debris falling behind the orbiter. One bit was spotted at the 33-second mark, while the other came just over 120 seconds into the flight, but neither appeared to hit the spacecraft.
Endeavour's
STS-126 crew will scan their shuttle's heat shield for dings on Saturday before
arriving at the space station on Sunday at about 5:13 p.m. EST (2213 GMT).
NASA is
providing live coverage of Endeavour's mission on NASA TV. Click here for SPACE.com's mission
coverage and NASA TV feed.
This report has been updated to reflect that the Russian spacecraft Progress 30, not 31, undocked from the International Space Station on Endeavour's launch day.
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