NASA's mission management team decided Friday that March 11 at 2:28 a.m. EDT is the official launch time for space shuttle Endeavour's STS-123 mission.

After two days of evaluating launch preparations for the mission, the group has confirmed the readiness of the shuttle, flight crew and payload for the next flight to the International Space Station.

Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Space Operations said there are very few issues being worked and the shuttle is ready to go. He stressed the16-day mission will be complex for the crew with five spacewalks to continue expansion of the station.

Orbiting the Earth aboard the International Space Station, the Expedition 16 crew spent Friday wrapping up a busy week with preparations for an upcoming visit from space shuttle Endeavour carrying the station's new Japanese module.

After a weekly conference between the station crew and the Russian flight control team, Commander Peggy Whitson installed the Centerline Berthing Camera System (CBCS) in the Harmony module. The CBCS will provide visual cues to the astronauts as they install the Japanese Experiment Logistics Module-Pressurized Section (JLP), which is being delivered by Endeavour on the STS-123 mission in March. JLP is the first component of Kibo, the Japanese Experiment Module, to be launched to the station.

As ground support personnel prepared to boost the International Space Station to a higher altitude, the crew aboard the orbital outpost worked with science experiments and reviewed emergency procedures Wednesday.

After completing the morning's activities and taking a lunch break, the Expedition 16 crew reviewed emergency procedures for the station's newest addition, the Columbus module. This is a standard procedure for any new module.

Later, Commander Peggy Whitson spoke with reporters in her home state of Iowa.

Engines on the station's Zvezda service module will fire Thursday at 12:16 a.m. EST for about two minutes, providing a further refinement to the 36-minute burn conducted during docked operations with space shuttle Atlantis on the recent STS-122 mission. This will complete the altitude adjustment needed to optimize rendezvous opportunities with space shuttle Endeavour, scheduled to launch March 11 for STS-123.

Systems aboard the International Space Station continue to perform well as the Expedition 16 crew kicked off a new week of science research and station maintenance.

The crew began Monday collecting blood samples for an ongoing study of human physiological changes during long-duration spaceflight. The results of this experiment will aid in the definition of nutritional requirements and development of food systems for future space exploration missions to the moon and Mars.

Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko continued unloading and inventorying supplies that arrived aboard the ISS Progress 28 spacecraft on Feb. 7. Progress 28 delivered nearly 5,200 pounds of cargo to the orbital outpost.

It's been called a white elephant, an orbital turkey, a money pit, and an expensive erector set. Seemingly, there's even people at NASA who think building it was a mistake. The International Space Station has been plagued with repeated delays, cost overruns, and bad press. Additionally, the ISS has never really caught the fancy of the general public and most likely there's a fair percentage of the world's population who have absolutely no idea there's a construction project the size of two football fields going on in orbit over their heads.

Source http://www.universetoday.com/2008/

1. Upcoming School Contacts An Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact is planned for College Reydellet in Saint-Denis, Ile de La Réunion on Monday, February 25 at 14:42 UTC. Approximately 550 students, ages 10-17, attend the school. Students contacted Victor Afanassiev on MIR from Tsup, Moscow in September 1999 and the College welcomed Victor Poliakov and Pavel Vinogradov who threw the space model from MIR and also Jean-Lou Chretien , Jean-Pierre and Claudie Haignere. ESA astronaut Léopold Eyharts, FX0STD/KE5FNO, plans to participate in this contact which will be conducted in French. The audio for this event will be fed into the EchoLink AMSAT (101 377) and JK1ZRW (277 208) servers.

An International Space Station Expedition 16 ARISS school contact has been planned with participants at College Reydellet, Saint-Denis, Ile de La Réunion on 25 Feb. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 14:42 UTC.

The contact will be a direct between stations FX0STD and FR5CY/P. The contact should be audible over Reunion Island and nearby Madacascar. Interested parties are invited to listen in on the 145.80 MHz downlink. The participants are expected to conduct the conversation in French.

Saint-Denis is the administrative capital of the French overseas department of Reunion Island, in the Indian Ocean. The city counts 130.000 inhabitants. Jules Reydellet College is located in the centre of the city, near the Saint-Denis river. Nearly 40 teachers provide tuition to 550 students aged 10-17. Languages taught are French, Spanish, English and German, optional Latin. Jules Reydellet College collaborated to the making of SPUTNIK 40 (RS17) and students contacted Victor Afanassiev on MIR from Tsup, Moscow, September 1999.The College welcomed : Victor Poliakov and Pavel Vinogradov who threw the space model from MIR and also Jean-Lou Chretien , Jean-Pierre and Claudie Haignere.

1. Upcoming School Contacts Robespierre Elementary School in Rueil Malmaison, France has been scheduled for an Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact on Thursday, February 21 at 14:21 UTC. Two hundred fifty-six students in grades 1-5 are enrolled at the school. ESA astronaut Léopold Eyharts, FX0STD/KE5FNO, plans to participate in this contact which will be conducted in French. An Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact is planned for College Reydellet in Saint-Denis, Ile de La Réunion on Monday, February 25 at 14:44 UTC. Approximately 550 students, ages 10-17, attend the school. Students contacted Victor Afanassiev on MIR from Tsup, Moscow in September 1999 and the College welcomed Victor Poliakov and Pavel Vinogradov who threw the space model from MIR, and Jean-Lou Chretien , Jean-Pierre and Claudie Haignere. ESA astronaut Léopold Eyharts, FX0STD/KE5FNO, plans to participate in this contact which will be conducted in French.

An International Space Station Expedition 16 ARISS school contact has been planned with participants at Robespierre, Rueil-Malmaison, France on 21 Feb. The event is scheduled to begin at approximately 14:30 UTC.

The contact will be a direct between stations FX0STD and F6KFA. The contact should be audible in most of Europe. Interested parties are invited to listen in on the 145.80 MHz downlink. The participants are expected to conduct the conversation in French.

Rueil-Malmaison is a lovely city 10 km west of Paris, near the "Mount-Valerien", surrounded by a large forest, parks and gardens, for the happiness of its 75,000 inhabitants. In the 17th century, the Cardinal of Richelieu, minister of King Louis the 13th, was the lord of Rueil. In 1799, Napoleon the 1st and his wife Josephine lived in the nice castle of Malmaison. At the end of the 19th century, famous impressionist painters like Renoir, Manet and Monet used to find scenery inspiration at the banks of the river Seine nearby. Robespierre elementary school is named after Maximilien Robespierre, a famous character of the French revolution in 1789. Robespierre is a mixed establishment for boys and girls with 10 classrooms, ranging from 1st grade to 5th grade and a total of 256 children, aged from 6 to 11.

Astronauts Rex Walheim and Stanley Love completed the third STS-122 spacewalk at 3:32 p.m. EST today. The excursion lasted seven hours and 25 minutes.

In this final scheduled spacewalk of the mission, Walheim and Love installed two payloads on the exterior of the European Space Agency's Columbus laboratory. The first, SOLAR, is an observatory that will monitor the sun for two years. The second is the European Technology Exposure Facility, which will carry nine experiments requiring exposure to the space environment.

With Mission Specialist Leland Melvin driving the space station's robotic arm, Love carried each of the experiment packages from space shuttle Atlantis' payload bay to Columbus where the spacewalkers installed them.