![]() ![]() Click here for mission updates and 's live NASA TV video feed. is providing continuous coverage of STS-127 with reporter Clara Moskowitz at Cape Canaveral and senior editor Tariq Malik in New York. Since then, NASA has conducted a thorough investigation of the issue, and tracked the problem back to a misaligned plate on the shuttle's 15-story external tank.Īfter successfully testing a fix last week, mission managers said they're confident it won't pose a problem this time. Originally scheduled to launch June 13, Endeavour was kept on the ground twice before by a leak of gaseous hydrogen from a vent pipe on its external fuel tank. ![]() It also marks the flight of the 500th person, slated to be Cassidy, to orbit. The mission is also the first in which two Canadians - Payette and astronaut Robert Thirsk - will be in space at the same time. When the shuttle arrives, the International Space Station will be home to 13 people - its highest population ever. The station's current crew includes two Russian cosmonauts and one astronaut each from the United States, Japan, Canada and Belgium. Six spaceflyers await Endeavour on the space station, including Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, who is set to be replaced by NASA astronaut Tim Kopra as an Expedition 20 flight engineer. "We can look at the complete of the whole Kibo soon, so that's very exciting." "Kibo is the first manned space system for the Japanese people, who are paying a lot of attention to this flight," said Koki Oikawa, a member of the Kibo project team at the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). At NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida, space shuttle Endeavour makes its final approach toward the fixed and rotating service structures on Launch Pad 39A, at left, on May 31, 2009. The Kibo element - a large outdoor platform for exposing science experiments to the space environment - will complete the $1 billion Japanese facility. "It's going to be unbelievably challenging." "We don't want to lose sight of the complexity of this mission," Moses said. ![]() The astronauts plan an ambitious schedule with five spacewalks and complex robotic work to install the final segment of the Japanese Kibo laboratory and spare supplies on the station. ![]()
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