Weather relents, so 'Endeavour' heads for space station

CAPE CANAVERAL -- In one spectacular flash, night seemingly turned into day as the space shuttle Endeavour blasted off from launch pad A Saturday.

John Herrington, NASA's first American Indian astronaut, joined commander James Wetherbee, 49, co-pilot Paul Lockhart, 36, and mission specialists Michael Lopez-Alegria, 44, on his first shuttle trip to the international space station.

Herrington, who will conduct a series of spacewalks outside the space station, is one-eighth Indian; his great-grandmother on his mother's side was Chickasaw.

Also aboard Endeavour are Kenneth Bowersox, 45, and Donald Pettit, 47, and Russian Nikolai Budarin, 49, who are replacements for the one American and two Russians who have been living at the space station since early June.

Six and a half minutes into the flight, Endeavour had traveled 437 miles on a launch that mission control later declared "flawless" and "perfect."

But it almost didn't happen.

For the second time in two days, forecasters at the Johnson Space Center in Houston watched questionable weather forming near the shuttle's two backup landing sites overseas.

In case the shuttle is forced to abort the mission before it reaches space, NASA has designated several sites that can accommodate a shuttle landing. Poor weather threatened two of those sites in Spain as heavy rain moved through Moron, about 35 miles southeast of Seville, and was possible around Zaragoza in the northeast portion of the country.

But the inclement weather held off long enough for the shuttle launch at 7:50 p.m.

In addition to the crew exchange, the 11-day mission calls for the installation of the $390-million, 14-ton truss -- the fourth of 11 structures that ultimately will expand the space station to roughly the length of a football field.

Endeavour should have blasted off Monday, but the countdown was halted with two hours remaining because of a leak in the astronauts' air supply.

Adding to the setback, while finding and replacing the leaky hose in Endeavour's cargo bay, workers accidentally knocked a platform into the shuttle's robot arm, damaging it.

Endeavour is scheduled to return at 3:49 p.m. Dec. 4.

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