Astronauts set for Endeavour’s Ride

The Kennedy Space Centre in Florida is all set for Tuesday, when Space Shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to launch. The Shuttle will carry a Japanese lab section and Canadian-built robot for the International Space Station.

After the prediction of favorable weather the chances of the launch are said to be 90 per cent at 2:28 a.m. EDT/0628 GMT.

The seven-man Endeavour crew will include two veteran NASA astronauts: Commander Dominic Gorie and lead spacewalker Richard Linnehan; rookies Greg Johnson, Michael Foreman, Robert Behnken and Garrett Reisman; and Japan's Takao Doi, who flew on a shuttle research mission in 1997.

Reisman will stay at the Space Station in place of France's Leopold Eyharts, who will come back.

One of the main jobs for the astronauts would be to put together Dextre, the robot. He's enormous and to see him with his giant arms, it is a little scary. It's a little monstrous, it is," said Reisman, of Dextre.

Also, they are supposed to deliver Japan's massive Kibo space station lab, a float-in closet for storing tools, experiments and spare parts.

"We've got a very, very ambitious flight schedule, but with a great orbiter waiting for us and this great crew, we're going to have a great mission," said Commander Gorie.

Dextre will be taken in pieces, and a team of spacewalking astronauts will then assemble the 3,400-pound robot and attach it to the outside of the space station.

"I feel kind of like dad on Christmas Eve, you know, opening up this present and trying to put it together for the son or daughter and going, 'Whoa, what have I gotten myself into here with this 'some assembly required' part of the space station," Foreman said.

Reisman, who will be moving into the space station, can't wait to see Dextre rise from its shuttle transport pallet, rotating up "almost like it's Frankenstein's monster coming alive."

Endeavour is the second of six shuttle flights NASA has planned for this year. Overall, it is the space agency’s 122nd shuttle mission.