Shuttle Endeavour on launchpad after 5 year break

HOUSTON (Reuters) - The newly overhauled space shuttle Endeavour was rolled out to a seaside launch pad in Florida on Wednesday to be prepared for its first mission in nearly five years.

Endeavour and seven astronauts, including teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan, are scheduled to launch on August 7 from Kennedy Space Center on a construction mission to the $100 billion International Space Station.

Endeavour is the last of NASA's three remaining shuttles to return to flight following the 2003 Columbia disaster. In the 2 1/2 years it took NASA to recover from the loss of Columbia and seven crew, Endeavour underwent a previously scheduled maintenance overhaul.

"We have made good use of that time," said deputy shuttle program manager Kim Doering.

Among Endeavour's upgrades is a new system that will enable the shuttle to tap into the space station's electrical system and stay longer at the outpost.

If the power transfer system works properly, NASA plans to extend Endeavour's mission from 11 to 14 days. That will allow time for the crew to finish extra work preparing the orbital outpost for the arrival of laboratories built by Europe and Japan in December and in 2008.

The shuttle will be carrying a new support beam for the station and a replacement gyroscope needed to help the outpost maintain its position in space.

It also will carry a module loaded with about 5,000 pounds of equipment and supplies for the station crew.

Morgan originally trained as the backup to NASA's first teacher-in-space, Christa McAuliffe, who died along with six NASA astronauts in the 1986 Challenger accident.

She will be operating the shuttle's robot arm and overseeing the transfer of items to and from the station.

A former elementary school teacher, Morgan will also squeeze in up to three question-and-answer sessions with students at science centers in Idaho, Virginia and Massachusetts and tape activities in space for future lesson plans for teachers.

Morgan joined the astronaut corps in 1998 as the agency's first educator-astronaut.

"Barbara will be able to see things through the eyes of a teacher and the mind of a teacher," said Cindy McArthur, an education program manager at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"It has taken a long time, but what I see in that is a lesson in perseverance," McArthur added.