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Endeavour Crew Arrives at Space Center, Preps for Friday Launch

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Posted: Wed Apr 27, 2011 08:11

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LionKiller

Endeavour Crew Arrives at Space Center, Preps for Friday Launch

The crew that will man the space shuttle Endeavour has arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the agency announced today.

"We're really happy to be here today," Commander Mark Kelly said in a statement. "We got a chance to take look at the orbiter as we first flew over the field and then the over pad. It's great to see Endeavour all ready to go again."

Endeavour is scheduled to launch on April 29 at 3:47pm Eastern.

Kelly and Pilot Greg H. Johnson were scheduled to practice landings in the Shuttle Training Aircraft (STA) today, which are Gulfstream II jets modified to handle like a space shuttle, NASA said.

NASA will hold a press conference at 11am Eastern tomorrow to provide an update on launch preparations; it will air on NASA TV. The 14-day mission will also include NASA Mission Specialists Michael Fincke, Andrew Feustel and Greg Chamitoff and European Space Agency Mission Specialist Roberto Vittori.

Kelly is the husband of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in an Arizona shopping center in January. She has been recuperating at a Houston rehab center, and is scheduled to be in attendance for the Endeavour launch. President Obama will also reportedly be there.

For the fourth time, NASA has also invited 150 of its Twitter followers to attend the launch; they were randomly selected from 4,100 online registrants last month. Attendees are from 43 states and almost a dozen countries. NASA previously had Twitter followers at the launch for Atlantis STS-129 and STS-132 and Discovery's STS-133 mission. This comes after NASA hit one million followers on its @NASA Twitter account Sunday.

NASA will broadcast a portion of a Tweetup starting on Thursday at noon Eastern as participants talk with NASA's Chief Scientist Waleed Abdalati; Endeavour's Flow Director Dana M. Hutcherson; International Space Station Associate Program Scientist Tara Ruttley; astronaut Clay Anderson; and Principal Investigator of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2, Sam Ting.

This is the final launch for Endeavour. Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to travel to the ISS in June, and when it returns, NASA will retire its space shuttle fleet.