As launch preparations continue for the STS-118 mission, NASA managers will gather at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday for the flight readiness review. During the two-day meeting, officials will evaluate the status of the vehicle, crew and payload and decide whether Space Shuttle Endeavour and STS-118 are officially "go" for launch.

Last week, the crew members completed the terminal countdown demonstration test. A routine element of prelaunch training, the test allowed the astronauts to try on their launch and entry suits, learn emergency procedures at the launch pad, and take part in a variety of familiarization activities and briefings. The test concluded with a countdown dress rehearsal at Launch Pad 39A.

Two International Space Station crew members Monday successfully wrapped up a 7-hour, 41-minute spacewalk that saw the removal and jettison of a refrigerator-size ammonia reservoir.

During the spacewalk Flight Engineer Clay Anderson and Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin also installed a television camera stanchion, reconfigured a power supply for an antenna assembly, and performed several get-ahead tasks.

http://www.amsat.org/amsat/archive/sarex/48hour/msg00855.html

On Wednesday, 25 July 2007, starting around 11:38 UTC, there will be a contact between the ISS and the Challenger Learning Center of Lucas County in Oregon, Ohio, USA. This is a direct contact with the ham radio ground station KB9UPS located at the Learning Center. Please join us in listening to this event.

The audio from this event will be fed into the EchoLink *AMSAT* (101 377) and *JK1ZRW* (277 208) servers, as well as being fed into the IRLP Discovery Reflector 9010. We hope to have good two way audio from this contact.

As we do normally, as soon as audio is suitable for transmission over amateur radio, we may be able to start feeding audio of set up activities from about 25 minutes prior to the start of the actual contact into EchoLink for listeners who enjoy listening in on these proceedings.

A docked Progress 25 cargo craft will fire its thrusters on July 21 and 23 raising the International Space Station's orbit. The reboost provides the proper phasing for an upcoming Progress 26 launch and docking. The Progress firing also clears the station after the Early Ammonia Servicer (EAS) is jettisoned during a July 23 spacewalk and provides flight day three rendezvous opportunities when space shuttle Endeavour arrives on mission STS-118. In advance of the reboost, the crew is testing the command and data telemetry of the Russian computers.

http://www.amsat.org/amsat/archive/sarex/