The Rotating Service Structure, left, rolls back on time Sunday, exposing shuttle Endeavour at Launch Pad 39A. Photo Credit/NASA TV
Technician’s at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center moved the Rotating Service Structure from around the shuttle Endeavour at Launch Pad 39A as scheduled at mid-day on Sunday, a key coundtown milestone.
Endeavour is poised to lift off Monday at 8:56 a.m., EDT, initiating the spacecraft’s final fight, a 16-day mission to the International Space Station.
The latest forecast includes a 70 percent chance of favorable weather. However, a series of spoke like troughs from a large low pressure system to the northwest could produce wind gusts in excess of limits at the shuttle’s emergency runway at Kennedy or low cloud ceilings. The weather outlook worstens on Tuesday, but improves on Wednesday.
Authorities estimate 500,000 people will gather on the roadways and beaches of Central Florida to witness Endeavour’s departure.
The mission was scrubbed on April 29 by a since repaired electrical problem with the shuttle’s hydraulic system.
Endeavour’s crew, commander Mark Kelly, pilot Greg H. Johnson and mission specialists Mike Fincke, Drew Feustel, Greg Chamitoff and Roberto Vittori of the European Space Agency are prepared for a demanding mission.
Their primary space station payloads include the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle physics experiment that will search for primordial antimatter, dark matter and Strangelets — a type of quark.
Endeavour will also deliver an external platform loaded with spare parts for the station’s communications, thermal control and robotics systems.
Feustel will lead Fincke and Chamitoff through four spacewalks to retrieve and deploy external science experiments as well as conduct space station maintenance.