Veteran shuttle commander Mark Polansky and six crewmates will blast off aboard Endeavour early Saturday on an ambitious mission to complete the space station's massive Japanese Kibo laboratory. Liftoff is set for 7:17 a.m. EDT (1117 GMT) from NASA's seaside spaceport in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Endeavour is poised to fly a marathon 16-day flight packed with five spacewalks and complicated robotic arm work to install a porch-like external experiment platform, spare space station parts and perform maintenance work.
"It's complex, it's challenging, it's long," Polansky said of the mission. "It's going to be a really complicated choreography."
As planned, the mission will tie the record for longest shuttle flight to the station. It will also mark the first time 13 people have lived aboard the outpost at the same time since the station doubled its population to full six-person crew earlier this month.
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