By Xinhua
Beijing : NASA confirmed the U.S. space shuttle Endeavour will launch on March 11 for a 16-day mission, according to media reports Sunday.
The NASA mission management on Friday confirmed the official launch time of the Endeavour. On March 11 at 2:28 a.m. EDT, the space shuttle will be launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
It will be the first of three flights to deliver a huge Japanese research complex to the International Space Station.
NASA’s new shuttle program manager, John Shannon, said: “It will be a long and complicated flight. The crew has five spacewalks and the shuttle carries major space station pieces from two countries: Japan and Canada.”
The Endeavour crew includes two of NASA’s most experienced fliers, four rookies and Japan’s Takao Doi, who participated in a shuttle research mission in 1997.
The seven-man crew is scheduled to spend two weeks at the space station to install a storage room for Japan’s Kibo laboratory complex and outfit the station’s Canadian-built robot arm with a mechanical hand.
The second portion of Kibo, which is a Japanese word for “hope,” is being prepared for launch in late May. The third segment, an outdoor porch for exposing experiments to space, will follow in 2009.