Space shuttle Endeavour races toward space station

[November 15, 2008]  CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- Space shuttle Endeavour raced toward the international space station on Saturday for a home makeover job after a brilliant moonlit launch that had NASA managers in awe.

The shuttle and its seven astronauts blasted into orbit Friday night on a mission to redo the insides of the space station, adding some extra bedrooms and a spare bathroom and kitchenette.

"It's our turn to take home improvement to a new level after 10 years of international space station construction," commander Christopher Ferguson called out.

Ferguson and his crew will double as plumbers and installers once they arrive at the 220-mile-high space station Sunday, hooking up extra cooking and sleeping equipment as well as a new water recycling system so the station's crew can expand next year.

The work will keep the astronauts up over Thanksgiving; NASA expects to add a 16th day to the mission, thanks to the on-time launch.

"Very few things that we do beat a night launch like you saw tonight," said LeRoy Cain, chairman of the mission management team. "We're off to a great start on what's going to be an extremely exciting, very complex and challenging mission."

NASA almost delayed the launch because of a door frame left loose at the pad by a worker who promptly admitted his mistake. Launch controllers determined the flapping frame would not hit the shuttle.

A nearly full moon, glowing orange at times, adorned the sky as Endeavour began its journey.

Soon after liftoff, Mission Control informed the astronauts that a quick look at the launch pictures revealed two pieces of debris trailing Endeavour, one at 33 seconds after liftoff and the other around the two-minute mark. It did not appear that the debris hit the shuttle, but analyses will continue for several more days to be certain the spacecraft was not damaged.

The astronauts' main priority Saturday is to survey their ship's wings and nose with a laser-tipped boom for any signs of damage. The day-after-launch inspection has been standard procedure ever since the 2003 Columbia disaster.

Besides enough Thanksgiving turkey dinners to go around, Endeavour is carrying thousands of pounds of equipment for the space station, most notably a revolutionary recycling system to turn urine into drinking water.

That, along with the new bathroom, kitchenette, exercise machine and two extra bedrooms being delivered, should allow NASA to double the size of the space station crew. The goal is to add three more residents, for a total of six, by next June.

By the time Endeavour leaves, the space station will have morphed into a five-bedroom, two-bath, two-kitchen home.

"We're about to get an extreme home makeover," the space station's commander, Mike Fincke, told Mission Control. "It doesn't get better than this, my friends."

The shuttle astronauts also will take on a lube job at the space station.

A massive joint that rotates half of the solar wings toward the sun has been jammed for more than a year; it's clogged with metal grit from grinding parts. The spacewalking astronauts will clean and lubricate that joint, replace its bearings and apply extra grease to keep a twin joint working.

The space agency has just 10 shuttle flights, including this one, before the fleet is retired in 2010 to make way for a new rocketship capable of taking astronauts to the space station and, eventually, the moon. An additional shuttle flight or two could be in NASA's future, however, to narrow the projected five-year gap between the last shuttle flight and the first manned launch of the new spaceship.

"As you saw today, we arranged to have the moon out there ... that's the perfect analogy of transition," said Bill Gerstenmaier, head of NASA's space operations.

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NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov

[Associated Press; By MARCIA DUNN]

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