Posted on 08/07/2007 8:01:29 PM PDT by KevinDavis
This is the live launch thread for the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
If you can't see it live on tv go to www.nasa.gov
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Space Shuttle Endeavour sits on launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida August 7, 2007 as the Rotating Service Structure is rolled back. Endeavour's STS-118 mission is scheduled to launch August 8 for an 11-day mission to the international space station with a 7-man crew. REUTERS/Mike Carlson (UNITED STATES)
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thanks as always
Best show in town...programming the Tivo, just in case.
thanks!
Wednesday 0636?
Is this Eastern Time?
1836 Eastern.
Anybody going? I usually watch it from my house but a buddy wants to get a close-up. So for the first time ever I may brave the traffic and head over to Brevard County.
At Launch Pad 39A, Space Shuttle Endeavour's payload lies nestled snugly inside the payload bay, before closure of the doors. The payload includes the S5 truss, the SPACEHAB module and external stowage platform 3. Credit: NASA/Charisse Nahser.
Nicknamed "Stubby" by its Boeing builders is the $11-million Starboard 5 (S5) truss, a 4,010-pound (1,818-kilogram) girder piece to be installed on the station's starboard-most edge during the STS-118 mission. Standing 13 feet (4.2 meters), the new truss element is about 11 feet (3.3 meters) long, 14 feet (4.5 meters) wide and will be plucked out via robotic arm just after docking at the ISS.
"The S5 truss is simply a spacer element, it's small," Kelly said in a NASA interview. "It's just a connecting segment that allows you to connect one of the solar array elements to another one that's going to come up on a later flight."
Endeavour's payload bay also holds a 7,000-pound (3,175-kilogram) spare parts porch known as the External Stowage Platform-3 (ESP-3) that will be installed robotically to the station's portside truss. It carries four hefty pieces of ISS hardware, including a new control moment gyroscope to replace a broken one within the station's U.S. attitude control system.
About 5,000 pounds (2,267 kilograms) of new supplies and equipment sit stowed away inside a SPACEHAB module connected to the orbiter via a pressurized tunnel. Once at the ISS, Endeavour astronauts plan to spend about 100 hours hauling cargo from the 11,000-pound SPACEHAB to the space station, and then packing experiment results, unneeded equipment and other items back into the pod from the ISS.
"Sadly, this is the last mission that's planned for this venerable cargo carrier," Higginbotham said of SPACEHAB, adding that future shuttle flights will be more focused to delivering new components of the ISS.
Thank you.
Still a go bump!!!
T-minus 6 hours and counting. Countdown clocks have resumed from a planned hold point. The count now proceeds to the T-minus 3 hour mark where the next planned hold will occur. Launch is still targeted to occur at 6:36 p.m. EDT.
spaceflightnow.com
1420 GMT (10:20 a.m. EDT)
Good morning from the Kennedy Space Center where fueling operations are going well at launch pad 39A for liftoff of space shuttle Endeavour later this evening. The liquid hydrogen portion of the external tank has reached the 98 percent level and the topping sequence has started. The liquid oyxgen filling has passed the 75 percent mark.
Eight hours to go.
spaceflightnow.com
1503 GMT (11:03 a.m. EDT)
FUELING COMPLETED. The external fuel tank has been pumped full with a half-million gallons of supercold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. The three-hour fueling process started at 8:11 a.m. with the chilldown conditioning.
But given the cryogenic nature of the oxidizer and propellant, the supplies naturally boil away. So the tanks are continuously topped off until the final minutes of the countdown in a procedure called “stable replenishment.”
With the hazardous tanking operation completed, the Orbiter Closeout Crew and Final Inspection Team have been given the OK to go out to the pad to perform their jobs. The closeout crew will ready Endeavour’s crew module for the astronauts’ ingress in a couple of hours; and the inspection team will give the entire vehicle a check for any ice formation following fueling.
So far so good
Indeed....
Another space ping time!!
Ping again when the crew has left the bar. ;’)
LOL!!!
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