Endeavour lifts off.
With the addition of the arm to the station, future assembly crews can hoist and lock into place large new laboratory and solar power modules as well as swing spacewalking astronauts to almost every corner of the station with tools and spare parts for maintenance and repairs. The arm is a larger and more capable version of the robotic arm that has flown aboard the shuttle for two decades. The upgrades, due next year and in 2003, will add a mobile base that allows the arm to roll from one end of the station to the other and will add a handlike extension. Kent Rominger, a veteran NASA shuttle commander, leads a diverse crew. As Endeavour lifted off, the space station and its three-member crew, Russian commander Yuri Usachev and NASA astronauts Jim Voss and Susan Helms, sailed 240 miles over the Indian Ocean, just off the southern coast of India.