Endeavour heads toward orbit under the power of its twin solid rocket boosters and three main engines. Photo: NASA TV/Spaceflight Now.

Lighting up the night sky with white-hot fire, the shuttle Endeavour finally thundered into orbit and set off after the international space station tonight, carrying a 14.5-ton solar array truss segment and a fresh three-man crew to the orbiting lab complex.

Running 12 days late because of technical problems and dismal weather in Spain that scrubbed a launch try Friday, Endeavour's twin solid-fuel boosters ignited with a crackling roar at 7:49:47 p.m., the moment Earth's rotation carried launch pad 39A into the plane of the station's orbit.

Under a clear, moonless sky, the 4.5-million-pound spacecraft instantly climbed away, accelerating past 100 mph in the first 10 seconds of flight and then wheeling about to line up on a trajectory up the East Coast of the United States.


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At the controls were commander James Wetherbee, making his sixth flight, and pilot Paul Lockhart, who flew aboard Endeavour in June and who was added to this flight Aug. 15 after the original pilot, Gus Loria, asked to be taken off the mission because of a medical issue.

Joining Wetherbee and Lockhart for the 112th shuttle mission are spacewalkers Michael Lopez-Alegria, John Herrington and the space station's next crew, Expedition 6 commander Kenneth Bowersox, flight engineer and Mir veteran Nikolai Budarin and science officer Donald Pettit.

Like Lockhart, Pettit was added to the station crew at the last minute - in late July - after the prime science officer, Donald Thomas, was grounded because of what sources said was concern about high radiation exposure on his previous shuttle flights.

"As a crew, you sort of build a bond and when you lose someone from the crew, it rips a little piece of you away as they leave," Bowersox said before launch. "And so for Don as a new guy, he should just be able to be thrilled by the fact that he's going to be flying.

"But he has to be a little bit sad for his friend Don Thomas. And the same thing for me. I'm happy to get to fly with Don Pettit but I was really looking forward to flying with Don Thomas, too, because he's such a great guy."

Endeavour put on a dramatic show as it rocketed away through a clear night sky, the 5,000-degree flame from its solid-fuel boosters visible for hundreds of miles around. Throngs of tourists and area residents turned out for the Saturday night spectacle and Endeavour did not disappoint.

The boosters, their fuel spent, were jettisoned as planned two minutes after launch and six-and-a-half minutes after that, Endeavour slipped into its planned preliminary orbit, on course for a docking with the space station Monday afternoon.

Reporters at the NASA press site could see the light from Endeavour's main engines for nearly seven minutes and 20 seconds with the shuttle some 600 miles away.

The only problem reported during or after ascent was a stuck "ball valve" in the shuttle's right-side orbital maneuvering system, or OMS, engine. The stuck valve, if it cannot be freed, will have no immediate mission impact and officials said the engine could still be used as is for the deorbit rocket firing needed to bring Endeavour back to Earth. In the meantime, however, the crew is using the left-side engine only.

Launch was in doubt earlier in the day because of rain showers and low clouds in Spain, where NASA staffs two landing sites, one at Moron Air Base in southern Spain and another 400 miles to the northeast at Zaragoza. Similar weather grounded Endeavour Friday night.

One Spanish runway must be available for an emergency landing in case of an engine failure midway during the climb to orbit and as Endeavour's terminal count began today, both once again were forecast "no go." But as the shuttle's launch time approached, the weather let up a bit near Zaragoza and mission managers cleared the shuttle for takeoff.

Bowersox, Budarin and Pettit will replace the station's current crew, Expedition 5 commander Valery Korzun, flight engineer Sergei Treschev and science officer Peggy Whitson, launched to the station June 5 aboard Endeavour.

Assuming an on-time landing Dec. 4, Korzun and his crewmates will have logged 182 days off the planet. Bowersox and the Expedition 6 crew plan to spend about four months in space before returning to Earth in March.

"We need to rotate the crews," lead station flight director Mark Kirasich said. "Expedition 5 will have been on orbit for about (180) days and we need to get them home and get a fresh crew on board.

"Secondly, this is a key mission to continue the assembly sequence. We're installing the truss, P1, on the port side of the S0 in order to be able to continue the assembly sequence in the spring and continue with the buildup, beginning first of all with P3 and P4 (segments on flight) 12A and then with the outboard truss on 12A.1, which will be later in the summer of 2003."

Said Expedition 6 increment manager Melissa Gard: "This is the first time we've combined a major assembly mission with a crew rotation flight. So Expedition 6 will get an early start on their mission, not just doing their traditional and moving in activities and transfer operations, but they also serve as an integral part of the (shuttle) crew in the preparation of the EVA crew members and then supporting or actually conducting robotics operations during the three (spacewalks they) will execute."

NASA originally planned to launch Endeavour in mid October, but the shuttle fleet was grounded in July because of concerns about cracks in hydrogen fuel lines leading to the orbiter's main engines.

Endeavour's launch slipped from Oct. 6 to Nov. 2 and then to Nov. 11, to accommodate the delayed launch of a new Russian Soyuz lifeboat to the station. On Nov. 10, however, the shuttle was grounded again, this time by a leak in an oxygen hose leading to Endeavour's crew cabin.

The leak was quickly traced to a flex hose beneath the floor of Endeavour's cargo bay near the crew cabin's aft bulkhead. To get access to the area, a large work platform had to be inserted into the cargo bay. Unfortunately, a distracted spotter looked away briefly at a critical moment and the access platform hit Endeavour's robot arm.

While engineers replaced the leaking oxygen line, another team began assessing the health of the robot arm. Ultrasound inspections revealed that a small area of the arm's carbon-composite structure had delaminated, or separated.

At that point, NASA planners faced three options: Launching Endeavour as is; removing the arm and flying the mission without it; repairing the arm in place at the launch pad. The latter two options would have delayed flight to the first week of December.

In the end, engineers with arm-builder MacDonald Dettwiler Robotics of Toronto proved the arm could easily withstand worst-case forces, or loads it would experience at launch. Shuttle program manager Ronald Dittemore then cleared Endeavour for launch and after a delay Friday due to the rain in Space, the shuttle finally began its delayed mission.

The first major objective of the flight will be accomplished within a few hours of Endeavour's docking with the international space station when the Expedition 6 crew officially replaces Expedition 5. That will occur after custom-fitted Soyuz lifeboat seat liners and pressure suits have been moved into the station and tested.

The next day, the combined shuttle-station crews will begin implementing the second major objective of the mission, installation, activation and checkout of a massive $390 million truss segment known as "port 1," or P1.

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