Houston
—


Fewer




than 24 hours after the successful launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour,




NASA officials said its




mission was




going well despite two glitches and a strange object spotted in video of the launch.





“It was a beautiful, awesome night launch,” said Mike Moses, lead shuttle flight director for the STS-123 mission, noting that an on-orbit inspection of Endeavour’s heat shield progressed without any hiccups. “It’s going great, no issues to report there.”

Led by commander Dominic Gorie, the mission of the seven-astronaut crew of Endeavour is




to deliver the first of Japan’s three-piece Kibo laboratory and Canada’s monstrous




robot named Dextre to the international space station (ISS). Their




16-day mission will be packed with




five 6.5-hour spacewalks all dedicated to




assembly of the growing orbital outpost.





Several hours after Gorie’s crew launched into space March 11




, spacecraft communicators told Gorie that a strange object was spotted in launch video 10 seconds into the liftoff.

The object, seen as a white streak in




imagery gathered during Endeavour’s launch, originated




a distance away from the shuttle’s now-discarded 15-story external fuel tank, then disappeared. Moses said he’s not sure if the object vanishes because it slammed into the nose cap of Endeavour, or if it simply slipped behind the port-side of the orbiter.

“We don’t know what it is yet, and we’re still looking at it,” Moses said of the mystery object, which he does not think is an errant chunk of ice or insulating foam shed from the orange external tank. “The imagery is very inconclusive.”





Whatever the case, Moses said he’s confident Endeavour will be in good shape for a March 26




landing.



“For the health of this orbiter, I can kind of put it out of my mind because [we’ve scanned] the nose cap at the front end of the orbiter,” he said.

Prior to docking with the international space station, Commander Gorie, shuttle pilot Gregory H. Johnson and mission specialist Takao Doi of Japan performed the six-hour inspection using the shuttle’s




15-meter




sensor-tipped extension boom.



Moses also noted




two problems that occurred during launch – the failure of a heat-dissipating system and a




computer that controls firing of the orbiter’s thrusters – are of little concern for the completion of the STS-123 mission because of redundant systems and potential fixes.



Spacewalkers Rick Linnehan and Garrett Reisman were




slated to begin the first of five planned excursions




at about 9:23 p.m. EDT




March 14, with initial assembly on Dextre. The




shuttle Endeavour arrived at the space station late




March 12.





Dextre is an on-orbit servicing robot designed to cut down on the number of dangerous spacewalks astronauts have to perform.



“It’s this giant robot with arms and … wrists and hands,” Linnehan said of the special-purpose dexterous manipulator




, as it is formally known.





Linnehan’s and Reisman’s




job was to attach each of Dextre’s




52-kilogram




hands to its respective









300-kilogram




arm during the spacewalk and to




fully assemble the massive robot arms on a mobile platform on the space station’s Port 1 truss.





In all, the astronauts were scheduled to conduct three spacewalks to complete Dextre.



Before the astronauts partially piece Dextre together, however, they also were scheduled to




help prepare the Japanese Logistics Pressurized (JLP) module for its voyage out of Endeavour’s payload bay. The module is the first piece of Japan’s massive laboratory called Kibo, which means “Hope” in Japanese.





Immediately after leaving the airlock, the spacewalkers will migrate to the payload bay and remove thermal covers that protected the JLP module during flight.





Bob Behnken and Leopold Eyharts, robotic arm operators and STS-123 mission specialists, will then hoist the 9.2-ton cylindrical module that will serve primarily as extra space for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kibo laboratory.

“I don’t mean to insult my own payload here,” Reisman said, “[but] it’s really just a closet of the Japanese laboratory.”

As the orbital closet is delivered to the top of the Harmony module, where it will remain until STS-124 astronauts deliver its




11-meter




counterpart called the Pressurized Module, Reisman said he might




be a little distracted. “We’ll be focused on our … work, but out of the corner of our eye we’ll see them taking this big module outside the payload bay,” he said.


Tariq

Malik contributed to this report from New York.