14 DAY TRIAL // The space shuttle Endeavour is getting ready for the next mission at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, after a nearly five-year wait. A fuel tank and the booster rockets were mounted on it, in preparation for the mission, scheduled on August 7.
The mission will send seven crew members to the International Space Station, one of which is Barbara Morgan, the first NASA astronaut designated as an Educator Mission Specialist or "teacher in space", who has been waiting for 22 years to fly into space.
Endeavour will also deliver a new truss segment, 5,000 pounds of cargo and fix a gyroscope which helps control the station's position, on the second shuttle flight NASA prepared for this year.
A total of 12 flights are scheduled by NASA in order to complete the construction of the space station and 2 more will be made to deliver spare parts and to carry out the last repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope, which is about to be decommissioned, after successfully serving its purpose since 1990.
NASA managers had hoped to squeeze five shuttle flights into 2007 at the beginning of the year, but a postponement in launching Atlantis made that impossible and created a domino-effect in launch delays for the rest of the year.
"We're really excited to have Endeavour fly again," Kim Doering, NASA's deputy manager of the space shuttle program, said Tuesday. "Obviously, having brand new belts and hoses and having just checked the structure and replaced all the tiles - they're brand new - makes this a very nice vehicle to climb on to."
Endeavour, one of the original five spaceships in US fleet, was named after the first ship commanded by 18th century British explorer James Cook. On the maiden voyage in 1788, Cook sailed into the South Pacific and around Tahiti to observe the passage of the planet Venus between the Earth and the Sun. During another leg of the journey, Cook discovered New Zealand, surveyed Australia and navigated the Great Barrier Reef.