Posted: Fri, Apr 6, 2001, 11:23 AM ET (1523 GMT)
NASA decided Thursday to launch the space shuttle Endeavour on April 19 after considering proposals to move up or back the launch date. NASA had been planning on an April 19 launch but had looked into either moving up the launch date a day or moving it back a couple weeks into early May to avoid creating a "traffic jam" at the station with both the shuttle and a Soyuz taxi mission. However, Russian officials agreed to delay the April 28 launch of the Soyuz if Endeavour's launch ran into delays so that there would be at least a two-day break between the shuttle undocking and Soyuz docking for the station crew. The main purpose of the STS-100 shuttle mission is to install a Canadian-built robot arm on the station and ferry additional research equipment and experiments. If the shuttle launches on time at 2:41 pm EDT (1841 GMT) April 19, it will dock with the station two days later and undock on April 28 before landing back at the Kennedy Space Center on the morning of April 30.

Related Links:

•  SPACE.com article
•  NASA STS-100 mission information