When is endeavor launch

Over the thirty-year course of the space shuttle program, the shuttles and their crews assembled parts of the International Space Station, deployed and serviced the Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-Ray Observatory, repaired and re-launched satellites, sent probes to Venus and Jupiter, and more.

Five different orbiters flew into space as part of the program— Columbia , Challenger , Discovery , Atlantis and Endeavour —for a total of missions.

Counted together, the space shuttles have carried people, flown over million miles, and spent over 1, days in orbit. The space shuttle was actually made up of several separate components. The main engines are part of the orbiter. All the components were reusable except for the external tank, which by design burned up in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean following each launch.

Built to replace space shuttle Challenger , Endeavour was the final orbiter to join the shuttle fleet. That earlier launch try was called off when a heater used to protect a critical power unit on the shuttle failed just hours before liftoff.

Engineers traced the problem back to a switchbox feeding power to the heater. They replaced the box and about 20 feet of wiring connected to it, and conducted thorough tests to make sure the problem was resolved.

There were no issues with the system during today's launch countdown. Kelly is leading a veteran crew of six , including pilot Gregory H. The launch was witnessed by a crowd of about , spectators, which included Kelly's wife, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.

Giffords has been recovering in Houston after being shot in January during a community outreach event outside a Tucson, Ariz. After the shooting, Kelly took time off to be with his wife and family, but decided in early February to resume training with the crew and continue as commander of the mission.

The non-profit Museum of Flight is one of the largest independent air and space museums in the world. The Museum's collection includes more than historically significant air- and spacecraft, as well as the William E. The Airpark includes outdoor displays with the first jet Air Force One, a Concorde airliner, and the first Boeing jumbo jet.

The Museum aeronautical library and archival holdings are the largest on the West Coast. Engineers at the Kennedy Space Center are continuing work to resolve the problem with a heater circuit in Endeavour 's hydraulic system that resulted in the launch postponement from 29 April. Although the root cause of the failure in the switchbox has not been found, technicians are replacing hardware that could have caused the problem.