This story was updated at 2:38 p.m. EST.
The space shuttle Endeavour is
closing in on the International Space Station, where its seven-astronaut crew
plans to dock today and deliver a new crewmate and vital gear to expand the
orbiting laboratory to handle double-sized crews.
Endeavour is due to dock at a port
on the station's Harmony module at about 5:04 p.m. EST (2104
GMT) with shuttle commander Chris Ferguson at the helm.
"It's the eve of show time," space
station commander Mike Fincke told Mission Control
late Saturday. "We're going to have a great day tomorrow."
Ferguson and several of his
crewmates are making their second trip to the space station, though the
orbiting lab has nearly doubled in its living space since the commander's last
visit in 2006.
"To look upon that and think that
humans put this in space, it's enough to give you goose bumps," Ferguson
told SPACE.com before flight. "I'm
just thrilled to be going back there."
But Ferguson
and his crew aren't arriving empty-handed. Packed away in Endeavour's
payload bay is a cargo pod packed with more than 14,000 pounds (6,350 kg) of
equipment to boost the space station into a five-bedroom research outpost with
two kitchens, two bathrooms and a gym.
Endeavour is carrying the second
bathroom and kitchen, two spare bedrooms, new gym equipment and a water
recycling system designed to turn astronaut urine and sweat into drinking
water. Four spacewalks are planned for the 15-day mission so astronauts can
clean and grease up an ailing solar array gear that has been damaged by metal
shavings.
The shuttle is also ferrying NASA
astronaut Sandra Magnus to the space station, where she plans to replace fellow
spaceflyer Greg Chamitoff
as a space station flight engineer. It's her second trip to the station since a
brief visit during a 2002 shuttle flight. Mission Control roused Endeavour's
crew with the song "Start Me Up" by the Rolling Stones, a tune chosen
specifically for Magnus.
"I want to thank my family for that
music and I'm looking forward to moving into my new home today," she radioed
down to Mission Control.
Chamitoff will return to Earth aboard
Endeavour in about two weeks after five months in space, while Magnus is
preparing for her planned three-month mission.
"I expect to be very surprised and
awed all over again," Magnus told SPACE.com
before launching
spaceward Friday night.
Orbital rendezvous
Before Endeavour's crew can get to
work, the shuttle has to arrive at the space station.
A glitch with the shuttle's main
radio antenna may prevent its other use as a radar tool for today's docking,
but Ferguson could switch to a backup star tracking system with little effort,
mission managers said Saturday.
Ferguson will fly Endeavour to a
point about 600 feet (182 meters) below the space station, then guide the
100-ton spacecraft through an orbital back flip to expose its belly-mounted
heat shield to the orbiting laboratory. Fincke, Chamitoff and Russian flight engineer Yury
Lonchakov will use high-resolution cameras to take
some 300 photos of Endeavour's heat-resistant tiles, then
send them back to Earth for analysis.
The orbital flip is part of NASA's
in-depth shuttle inspection plan instituted after heat shield damage led to the
loss of the shuttle Columbia
and its crew in 2003. Endeavour astronauts used a laser-tipped inspection boom
to scan their wing edges and nose cap for damage from launch debris on
Saturday. They'll do it again after undocking from the space station later in their mission to hunt for new dings from space
trash or micrometeorites.
So far, the shuttle appears to be in
fine health with the exception of the antenna glitches and what appeared to be
a torn insulation blanket near the base of Endeavour's left rear engine pod.
Mission controllers on Earth can work around the antenna glitches, but a closer
inspection found that the lost blanket was apparently still in place and not a
cause for any concern for re-entry heating, mission managers said.
NASA is providing live coverage of Endeavour's
STS-126 mission on NASA TV. Click
here for SPACE.com's mission coverage and NASA TV feed.
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