Endeavour's crew, Greg Chamitoff, Drew Feustel, Mark Kelly, Greg H. Johnson, Mike Fincke and Roberto Vittori, pictured left to right, arrive at NASA's Kennedy Space Center as their countdown gets under way. Photo Credit/NASA Photo
The countdown for shuttle Endeavour’s final mission, a two week voyage to equip the International Space Station with a $2 billion physics experiment, got under way on Tuesday, with a mostly favorable weather outlook.
Endeavour’s lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is scheduled for Friday at 3:47 p.m., EDT.
The next to last shuttle program flight is expected to draw large crowds, among them Presdent Barack Obama and his family.
“We’re really happy to be here,” mission commander Mark Kelly told the news reporters gathered at Kennedy’s shuttle landing facility to greet Endeavour’s six astronauts “It’s great to see Endeavour ready to go again.”
Kelly, pilot Greg H. Johnson, mission specialists Mike Fincke, Drew Feustel, Greg Chamitoff and European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori arrived in Florida aboard NASA T-38 jets based in Houston.
The countdown got under way at 2 p.m., EDT, not long after the astronauts landed.
Among those expected to witness the launching is Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Kelly’s wife. Giffords has been undergoing rehabitlitation for a gunshot wound received Jan. 8 at a Tucson political rally. Her doctors approved the trip, the couple announced over the weekend.
Forecasters offered an 80 percent chance of favorable launch weather. A cold front is expected to move through Florida on Thursday, leaving breezes that might exceed crosswinds limits at the shuttle’s emergency runway.
The flight will be the 25th for the 19-year-old shuttle orbiter. The youngest member of NASA’s shuttle fleet was fabricated to replace Challenger, which was lost in a launch accident in 1986.
The mission will be challenging.
The astronauts have trained to deliver and equip the station with the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, an internationally sponsored particle detector developed to characterize primordial antimatter and dark matter. Though visibly absent from the cosmic fabric, antimatter should be present in quantities equal to ordinary matter, according to the big bang theory.
Scientists can measure the gravitational influence of dark matter on the motions of galaxies and the bending of star light, but have not been able to determine its composition.
The shuttle crew will also deliver the Express Logistics Carrier-3, an external platform to secure spare parts to the outside of the station for communications, thermal and robotic systems
Both the AMS and ELC-3 will be hoisted from Endeavour’s cargo bay with the shuttle and station robot arms.
Four spacewalks are on the agenda as well.
They are assigned to Fincke, Chamitoff and Feustel, who have trained to retrieve and install science experiments, lubricate the mechanism that rotates solar array panels and carry out other upgrades.
Mission managers will have the option of adding two one day extensions to the mission, stretching it to 16 days.