To reach the international space station, shuttles must blast off within five minutes of the moment the pad is in the plane of the lab's orbit. For March 11, a night launch is required, only the second in eight post-Columbia flights.

As usual, a battery of film, video and still cameras will photograph Endeavour's climb to space, including cameras mounted on the shuttle's twin solid-fuel boosters, on its external fuel tank and inside an umbilical well in the shuttle's belly where external tank propellant lines enter the orbiter.

Tank separation will occur in orbital darkness, but Endeavour is equipped with Nikon flash units for the umbilical well camera to help engineers document the condition of the tank's foam insulation. The flash system, which is powerful enough to illuminate the tank at distances up to 130 feet, will fire every two seconds starting eight seconds after separation. Twenty three flashes are expected before the tank drifts too far away.

The umbilical well imagery will be downlinked as soon as possible, along with data from impact sensors mounted behind Endeavour's reinforced carbon carbon wing leading edge panels. While analysis of the imagery and radar data is going on at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the astronauts will spend their second day in space carrying out a now-standard inspection of the ship's nose cap and RCC panels, which experience the most extreme heat during re-entry.

Gorie, Johnson and Doi will use the shuttle's 50-foot-long robot arm to latch onto the equally long orbiter boom sensor system, or OBSS, mounted along the right side of Endeavour's cargo bay. The OBSS is equipped with a laser scanner and high-resolution cameras capable of spotting any significant impact damage to the critical nose cap and wing leading edge panels.

"We're all operating the shuttle's robotic arm and we'll first grapple the OBSS, the Orbiter Boom Sensor System, and it about doubles the length of the arm," Johnson said in a NASA interview. "Then we can reach around and look underneath the orbiter and check out all the tiles and the reinforced carbon carbon and we can also reach around and look at the nose of the shuttle. We basically will be inspecting in great detail every little, tiny little patch of thermal protection system on the shuttle. So it's an all-day task."

DATE/EDT.......DD...HH...MM...EVENT

03/11/08
Tue 02:28 AM...00...00...00...Launch
Tue 03:06 AM...00...00...38...OMS-2 rocket firing
Tue 03:18 AM...00...00...50...Post insertion timeline begins
Tue 04:58 AM...00...02...30...Laptop computer setup (part 1)
Tue 05:08 AM...00...02...40...Shuttle robot arm (SRMS) powerup
Tue 05:52 AM...00...03...24...NC-1 rendezvous rocket firing
Tue 06:03 AM...00...03...35...SRMS checkout
Tue 06:18 AM...00...03...50...ET umbilical camera downlink
Tue 06:38 AM...00...04...10...Wing leading edge sensors activated
Tue 07:08 AM...00...04...40...Group B computer powerdown
Tue 08:28 AM...00...06...00...Crew sleep begins
Tue 04:28 PM...00...14...00...Crew wakeup
Tue 07:08 PM...00...16...40...Laptop computer setup (part 2)
Tue 07:37 PM...00...17...09...NC-2 rendezvous rocket firing
Tue 07:38 PM...00...17...10...SRMS unberths OBSS
Tue 08:08 PM...00...17...40...Spacesuit checkout preps
Tue 08:28 PM...00...18...00...Ergometer setup
Tue 08:38 PM...00...18...10...Spacesuit checkout
Tue 08:53 PM...00...18...25...OBSS starboard wing survey
Tue 10:28 PM...00...20...00...Crew meal
Tue 10:48 PM...00...20...20...OBSS nose cap survey
Tue 11:28 PM...00...21...00...Spacewalk equipment prepped for transfer

03/12/08
Wed 12:33 AM...00...22...05...Transfer preps
Wed 12:38 AM...00...22...10...OBSS port wing survey
Wed 12:58 AM...00...22...30...OMS rocket pod survey
Wed 02:38 AM...01...00...10...SRMS berths OBSS
Wed 02:58 AM...01...00...30...Laser data downlink
Wed 03:38 AM...01...01...10...Rendezvous tools checkout
Wed 04:38 AM...01...02...10...Centerline camera setup
Wed 04:58 AM...01...02...30...NC-3 rendezvous rocket firing
Wed 08:13 AM...01...05...45...Crew sleep begins

The final phase of the two-day orbital chase will begin around 8:42 p.m. Wednesday with a critical rocket firing as Endeavour trails the station by about 9.2 miles. After reaching a point about 600 feet directly below the lab complex, Gorie will fire maneuvering jets to put the shuttle in a slow back flip, exposing the ship's heat shield while the station crew snaps dozens of high-resolution photos with digital cameras equipped with 400- and 800-millimeter lenses.

"The rendezvous pitch maneuver is a 360 degree pitch almost like a loop where we expose the bottom of the orbiter to the space station where they have some very powerful cameras ... like you see out at the end of the football field in the end zone with people taking pictures of a football game," Gorie said. "And with those cameras, they are able to detect whether there's any white tile showing on the surface of the orbiter and that would mean that the black coating on the belly tiles has been damaged.

"During the RPM, the commander is in charge of the orbiter and flying the vehicle, so I'll be at the aft station of the space shuttle flight deck and we'll be looking out through the overhead windows as we start this maneuver and make sure that we are in the right position with the right rates. We'll start that off with an auto pilot maneuver that takes us through this hands-off pitch at that point. It's sort of different than anything we've done before as, as astronauts, to be hands-off of the orbiter as we cannot see the space station any more. But the last couple flights that have done this have had great luck and it's worked very well for us."

DATE/EDT.......DD...HH...MM...EVENT

03/12/08
Wed 04:13 PM...01...13...45...STS crew wakeup
Wed 04:28 PM...01...14...00...ISS crew wakeup
Wed 05:13 PM...01...14...45...Group B computer powerup
Wed 05:18 PM...01...14...50...ISS daily planning conference
Wed 05:33 PM...01...15...05...Rendezvous timeline begins
Wed 06:18 PM...01...15...50...NH rendezvous rocket firing
Wed 07:08 PM...01...16...40...NC-4 rendezvous rocket firing
Wed 07:58 PM...01...17...30...Spacesuits removed from airlock
Wed 08:40 PM...01...18...12...TI rocket firing (range to ISS: 9.2 sm)
Wed 09:08 PM...01...18...40...ISS crew meal
Wed 09:28 PM...01...19...00...Hand-held laser ops
Wed 09:53 PM...01...19...25...Approach timeline begins
Wed 10:20 PM...01...19...52...RPM photography
Wed 11:27 PM...01...20...59...DOCKING
Wed 11:48 PM...01...21...20...Leak checks

03/13/08
Thu 12:08 AM...01...21...40...Docking video playback
Thu 12:18 AM...01...21...50...Orbiter docking system prepped for ingress
Thu 12:28 AM...01...22...00...Group B computer powerdown
Thu 12:33 AM...01...22...05...Post docking laptop reconfig
Thu 12:38 AM...01...22...10...Hatch open
Thu 01:08 AM...01...22...40...Welcome aboard!
Thu 01:13 AM...01...22...45...Safety briefing
Thu 01:38 AM...01...23...10...Post-docking EVA transfer
Thu 01:38 AM...01...23...10...Soyuz seatliner transfer to ISS
Thu 01:38 AM...01...23...10...SRMS grapples Dextre Spacelab pallet (SLP)
Thu 02:28 AM...02...00...00...SLP unberth and install
Thu 02:28 AM...02...00...00...Soyuz seatliner installation
Thu 03:18 AM...02...00...50...Logistics transfers
Thu 03:33 AM...02...01...05...SLP ungrapple
Thu 03:38 AM...02...01...10...Airlock preps
Thu 04:28 AM...02...02...00...EVA-1: Procedures review
Thu 07:38 AM...02...05...10...EVA-1: Airlock 10.2 psi depress
Thu 08:28 AM...02...06...00...STS crew sleep begins

"We slowly back into the space station with the commander at the controls and flying it manually," Gorie said. "That is one of the most exciting parts of the mission for me. You get to fly formation with the space ship being framed by creation underneath you, that's just spectacular. So it's very easy to get distracted by the beauty of what's going on underneath and the beauty of the space station. Flying formation at that time is a really, really exciting thing that demands everybody on the flight deck to be participating. Everybody has a role in that process so it really relies a lot on teamwork and training."

The actual docking, Gorie said, "is really exciting. ... The docking system is a very elaborate beautifully designed piece of equipment that can connect the two vehicles together after a very slow collision. There are hooks that grab onto the space station, once all of the motions are damped out, with springs like shock absorbers on this extended ring. We slowly draw the two vehicles together with the screw drives that pull it together and after an hour of pressure checks and docking system checks we are able then to open the hatch. But knowing that there's this space station crew on the other side waiting for our arrival, eager to have a replacement for one of their folks and, and some of the re-supply items that we're bringing, it makes it a really an exciting time as well."

Whitson, Malenchenko and Eyharts will welcome the shuttle crew into the Harmony module. After a mandatory safety briefing to familiarize the visiting astronauts with emergency procedures, the crews will get busy transferring spacesuits and other equipment to the station's Quest airlock to prepare for the first spacewalk the following day.

The disassembled Dextre robot, designed to operate in weightlessness, has been tested but never fully assembled on Earth. It will make the climb to space in pieces bolted to a Spacelab pallet in the shuttle's cargo bay. After docking, Behnken and Johnson, operating the station's robot arm from inside the Destiny lab module, plan to pull the pallet out of the cargo bay. It will be attached to a grapple fixture on the side of the mobile base system normally used to move the station arm along the front face of the main solar power truss.

The robot cannot be assembled in the cargo bay because of its sheer size. If an emergency developed requiring a quick separation from the station, Endeavour's cargo bay doors could not be closed due to interference with Dextre. As a result, NASA flight planners decided to have the crew anchor the Spacelab pallet to the mobile base system and to build the robot on the station's power truss. After assembly is complete, Dextre will be mounted on the hull of the Destiny module and the pallet will be reberthed in Endeavour's cargo bay for return to Earth.

"Right after we rendezvous we're going to take that SLP and install it in a temporary location on the ISS," Johnson said. "Then through the next three or four days, actually five or six days, we're going to assemble Mr. Dextre on the various spacewalks and that's a pretty involved process."

Continue to Part 3 -->