Thursday, November 13, 2008

Endeavour Poised for Friday Night Launch

SLN: Up to the Minute, I'm Charles Atkeison. Space shuttle Endeavour remains on schedule for her launch tomorrow evening from her seaside launch pad here at the Kennedy Space Center.

STS-126 Commander Chris Ferguson and Pilot Eric Boe [above] posed for this image after practicing shuttle landings on Wednesday night. Launch and landing will take place at night and the shuttle training aircraft handles similar to the orbiter. They took the STA up for several touch-and-go's from either end of the runway near the vehicle assembly building.

+ Tune in right here for Live Launch Coverage beginning at 2:30 pm ET on Friday by clicking on the NASA-TV link at the right. +

As of this morning, there are no technical issues being worked and the team in firing room #4 have completed loading preflight fuels into Endeavour's on board tanks in support of her on orbit operations.

At about 11:20 pm ET this evening, the rotating service structure, which wraps around the shuttle stack, will be rolled away to expose Endeavour for flight. The RSS acts as a weather protector and allows technicians to work around different height levels of the space shuttle stack.

Liftoff of Endeavour remains set for 7:55:30 pm ET tomorrow night to begin a 15-day mission in support of the international space station. A possible one to two day mission extension is likly based on an on time launch.

Stay tune for new updates as we follow the flight of mission STS-126. At T-1 day, 13 hours until launch, this is spacelaunchnews.com.

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