Shuttle Endeavour is Ready for Launch

NASA's oldest external tank will help its youngest space shuttle fly on a final flight a week from Friday.

Officials on Tuesday set Endeavour's launch for 3:47 p.m. April 29 after a daylong review determined the shuttle and the decade-old tank were fit to fly.
Known as the "hurricane tank" and "Frankentank," the bullet-shaped orange fuel tank needed modifications after the 2003 Columbia disaster and repairs after sustaining non-structural damage during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
More recently, sections were reinforced as a precaution to prevent the kinds of cracks found and repaired on the previous tank flown, and its insulating foam suffered minor hail damage in a storm.
"We reviewed in excruciating detail that this tank is really ready to fly, that there's no concerns," Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for space operations, said Tuesday at Kennedy Space Center.
Endeavour, which first flew in 1992, is now set to blast off on its 25th and final mission, the second-to-last flight before NASA ends the shuttle program.
A veteran crew of six led by commander Mark Kelly plans to deliver spare parts and a $2 billion cosmic ray detector -- the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer -- to the International Space Station.
The mission is scheduled to last 14 days but is expected to be extended up to two days so the crew can perform maintenance on station systems.
Kelly; pilot Greg Johnson; and mission specialists Greg Chamitoff, Drew Feustel, Mike Fincke and Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori plan to fly into KSC on April 26, just before the countdown's 2 p.m. start.
NASA doesn't know yet whether Kelly's wife, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, will attend the launch. Giffords is recovering from a brain injury suffered during a January shooting rampage in her Tucson, Ariz., district and awaiting doctors' approval to make the trip.
Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach said Endeavour was enjoying smooth preparations for next week's countdown, especially since the mission was delayed 10 days from its previous target launch date of April 19.