Free Republic

The space shuttle Endeavour and the international space station will be visible to Antelope Valley residents early each morning for more than a week beginning Sunday. The Endeavour mission, to deliver the first component of a Japanese science laboratory and a Canadian robotic system to the station, is scheduled to end with a landing at 5:33 p.m. Wednesday, March 26, in Florida. The shuttle-space station combination will look like a very bright star moving steadily as they arc through the sky. If no variations are made to the flight plan, the only evening sighting of the shuttle and space station...

EDWARDS AFB ­- Space shuttle Endeavour astronauts are going into space wearing a mission patch designed by NASA Dryden Flight Research Center research pilot Mark Pestana. Mission STS-123 will take to the international space station the Japanese Kibo module, which will hold electronic equipment and serve as a storage area for experiment materials. It also carries the Canadian Dextre robot, which will attach to the station's robotic arm and allow astronauts to replace hardware outside the station without doing a spacewalk. Pestana's logo depicts a shuttle with its mechanical arm extending the Kibo module to the station. Behind the shuttle...

The crew of the shuttle Endeavour strapped in today at pad 39A for a dress-rehearsal countdown that sets the stage for launch March 11 on a 16-day space station assembly mission featuring five spacewalks, installation of a Japanese logistics module and assembly of a complex hand-like attachment for the lab's robot arm. Shuttle commander Dominic Gorie, pilot Gregory Johnson, flight engineer Michael Foreman, Richard Linnehan, Robert Behnken, Japanese astronaut Takao Doi and space station flight engineer Garrett Reisman boarded Endeavour early today and worked through the final hours of a terminal countdown demonstration test, or TCDT, that ended with the...