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Endeavour Is Set for Launching After Docking Problem Is Solved
The space shuttle Endeavour was approved today for a Tuesday launching to the International Space Station after two Russian astronauts cleared a jammed docking port during a spacewalk there.
Endeavour and a crew of seven are set to blast off for the space station at 5:45 p.m. from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The flight was delayed five days while engineers tried to secure a Russian cargo craft, Progress, to the station before the shuttle arrived.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials said today that no major technical issues stood in the way of Endeavour's 11-day flight and that the weather was expected to be favorable for the next three days if other delays occurred.
The shuttle's mission to bring a new crew to the station and deliver 6,000 pounds of supplies originally was scheduled for Thursday, then was postponed twice because of questions concerning the pilotless Progress space freighter that arrived at the station on Wednesday.
The seven-ton Progress docked with the station, but the latches that secure the two craft together did not engage. Television pictures showed that the connection was being blocked by a ropelike obstruction. The authorities feared that docking the shuttle, while Progress was not firmly attached, could cause the freighter to damage the station.
To clear the obstruction, two members of the station crew, Lt. Col. Vladimir N. Dezhurov and Mikhail Tyurin, conducted a three-hour spacewalk today while the station commander, Frank L. Culbertson Jr., maintained the outpost. The spacewalkers found that Progress was being blocked from locking to the Zvezda living quarters module by a rubber seal that apparently came off a cargo ship that left the station on Nov. 22.
Russian ground controllers backed Progress a few inches out of the docking port, and Colonel Dezhurov clipped the seal and removed it for examination back on Earth.
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