By KURT LOFT
The Tampa Tribune

CAPE CANAVERAL Just three weeks after the shuttle Atlantis touched down in Florida, NASA is set to launch Endeavour as part of an ambitious schedule of six missions this year.
If weather and hardware cooperate, Endeavour’s seven-man crew will blast off in the wee hours, at 2:28 a.m. Tuesday, on a 16-day venture to deliver the first section of a giant Japanese laboratory to the International Space Station. It marks the 25th shuttle mission to the 10-year-old orbiting outpost.
With the appearance of the Kibo module, Japan not only will have a presence on the station, but also will celebrate its first manned facility in space. The effort also will complete the station’s international team of the United States, Canada, Russia and members of the European Space Agency. Last month, a shuttle crew attached a German laboratory to the station.
“This is the first flight where we actually have all the partners” participating, Dana Weigel, the station’s flight director, said of the current mission.
Kibo, the Japanese word for “hope,” will be completed in April with the arrival of a second pressurized module, making it the largest habitable part off the station. The Japanese will focus their research on medicine, materials science, biotechnology and the disciplines that require an absence of gravity. The multibillion-dollar lab has been in development for two decades.
In August, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration then will dedicate a shuttle mission to upgrading the Hubble Space Telescope, followed in the fall with two more ventures to the station.
Although agency officials say they are not cutting corners to complete the station by its 2010 deadline, many experts have said the job can only be done if there are no significant delays in getting shuttles off the ground.
Setting the program back was the time it took find ways to prevent the external tank from shedding foam and ice. A piece of debris falling off the tank damaged the wing of Columbia in 2003, leading to the loss of craft and crew on re-entry.

Reporter Kurt Loft can be reached at kloft@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7570.