According to news coming in from the American space agency, the space shuttle Endeavor has been authorized to take off on Saturday, June 13th, from Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The flight will deliver two new modules to the International Space Station, and the crew, in a series of five spacewalks, will attach them to the Japanese Kibo science module. The shuttle will also carry up a replacement for JAXA Astronaut Koichi Wakata, in the person of NASA Flight Engineer Timothy Kopra.

“We're in really good shape to fly. As a management team we had a good unanimous 'go' for launch,” the Chief of Endeavor's mission management team, Mike Moses, said recently in a press conference at the KSC. “The weather does look very good for launch. We also look very good if we happen to delay,” Kathy Winters, the shuttle weather officer, added. She explained that there was a 90 percent chance of good weather for Saturday, and that the following days would be clear as well.

Stormy weather caused some concerns during STS-125, when the space shuttle Atlantis could not land at the KSC on account of the clouds and heavy rain, and had to spend two extra days in orbit. The craft eventually landed at the Edwards Air Force Base, in Southern California, as mission planners wanted to shorten the amount of time the craft spent in space with low energy reserves by as much as possible. The shuttle was returning from a successful mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, the fifth and final one to do that. The flight was also the last one to repair a satellite, NASA announced shortly after.

Mission planners scheduled Endeavor's launch to take place at 7:17 am EDT (1117 GMT) from Launch Pad 39A. During the STS-125 mission, the shuttle was placed on the other launch facility at the KSC, but, when the previous mission ended, it was moved here, and Launch Pad 39B was officially handed over to Project Constellation. The STS-127 flight will last for a full 16 days, during which time the astronauts aboard the shuttle and the space station will carry out five spacewalks to install the new components, Space informs.

If, for some reason, the launch sequence does not go through on Saturday, then NASA also has launch window opportunities on Sunday and Monday, and the weather is expected to remain suitable on those days as well. Should the craft fail to launch on Monday as well, then it will have to make way for the LCROSS/LRO mission, launching June 17th from the nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Base.