Live In Orbit: On Anniversary, Fly Me To The Moon?

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NASA flight controllers celebrated the 40th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 moon-landing this morning by sending the joined crews of shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station instructions for flying to the Earth's sole natural satellite.

Of course neither the shuttle nor the station have the propulsive capability to fly beyond low Earth orbit and back, but retired flight controller Don Adamo helped colleagues in the Mission Control Center work up a "burn pad" anyway.

"Caution: Executing this procedure will result in a trans-lunar trajectory. May cause loads exceedences," an accompanying note said. "Propellant may not be available for return to earth. Crew is advised to pack a change of clothes."

You can check it out here in this Flight Day 6 Execute Package. See Message 044A.

Coming up later today:

Endeavour mission specialists Dave Wolf and Tom Marshburn will venture outside the station's U.S. Quest airlock on the second of five spacewalks planned during NASA's 127th shuttle mission.

The two plan to transfer three large spares from a cargo pallet to an external stowage platform on the port side of the station's central truss.

The 6.5-hour spacewalk is scheduled to begin at 11:28 a.m. You can watch it unfold here in The Flame Trench. Simply click the NASA TV box on the right side of the page to launch our NASA TV viewer and be sure to refresh this page for periodic updates.

The 13 people aboard the shuttle and the station were woken up earlier today with the theme songs of the 1960s television series 'The Thunderbirds,' by composer Barry Gray. It was bamed up especially for Canadian Space Agency astronaut Julie Payette.

On the station, commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Frank De Winne will spend part of their day working as orbital plumbers. They try to fix a broken toilet on the station.

The broken commode is one of two on the station. The shuttle toilet also is available.

Padalka and De Winne will swap out parts on the toilet in an effort to get it up and operating again.