Shuttle Crew Strides Through Last Day At Station

The Endeavour astronauts are striding through their final full day at the International Space Station, finishing up the delivery of supplies and equipment and preparing for a high-flying Friday night departure from the outpost.

Shuttle mission specialists Steve Robinson, Terry Virts and Kay Hire started their day with about 87 percent of planned transfers between Endeavour and the station complete.

Also coming up today: A space-to-ground news conference with both the shuttle and station astronauts and an official "grand-opening" ribbon cutting for the U.S. Tranquility module and the Italian observation deck Cupola.

You can watch mission operations live here in The Flame Trench. Click the NASA TV box on the right side of the page to launch our NASA TV viewer and live round-the-clock coverage of Endeavour's round trip to the station. Refresh this page, too, for periodic updates.

The news briefing is scheduled at 9:39 p.m. and the ribbon cutting will follow at 11:39 p.m.

Major mission milestones are in this latest revision -- Rev L -- of the STS-130 NASA TV Schedule.

The crew's detailed timeline is in this Flight Day 12 Execute Package.

Check out Message No. 170 on pages 28-31 to see the winner and top finishers in the Shuttle program Commemorative Patch contest. Third-place went to Tim Gagnon of NASA's Kennedy Space Center, a local artist who has created a number of shuttle crew mission insignias over the years.

We've also got a feature on Robinson, NASA's very own 21st Century Renaissance Man, HERE.

The astronauts will start making departure preparations in the overnight hours. Look for a farewell ceremony and hatch closure at 2:34 a.m.

The shuttle is scheduled to undock from the station at 7:54 p.m. Friday. Landing at Kennedy S[ace Center is scheduled for 10:20 p.m. Sunday.