US space shuttle Endeavour poised for last liftoff

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — The US space shuttle Endeavour is poised to launch Friday carrying a multibillion dollar tool for searching the universe on the penultimate flight for NASA's 30-year program.As many as 750,000 onlookers, including President Barack Obama, are expected to converge on the area around Cape Canaveral to catch a glimpse of the shuttle's blast off toward the International Space Station at 1947 GMT.After Endeavour returns from its 14-day mission and Atlantis launches for a final time in June, the iconic space shuttle program will close for good.That will leave Russia as the sole taxi for astronauts heading to and from the orbiting space lab until a new spaceship is built by a partnership between NASA and private companies, by 2015 at the earliest.Stormy weather boosted the likelihood of a delay to launch from 20 to 30 percent, though the worst appeared to have passed by Friday morning. The process of filling the external fuel tank began on time at 6:22 am (1022 GMT), and the possibility of passing storms in the morning were not likely to delay the lift-off, NASA said.If Friday's launch is postponed, there are other launch opportunities on Saturday and Sunday.The shuttle Endeavour is the youngest of the three-member space flying fleet. It was built in the wake of the Challenger disaster in 1986 and flew its first mission to space in 1991.Discovery, the oldest, flew its last mission in February and March, and is in the process of being stripped of all its valuable components ahead of its retirement in a museum on the edge of the US capital, Washington.Endeavour will carry a $2 billion, seven-ton particle physics detector, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2, which will be left at the space station to scour the universe for clues as to how it all began.Leading the mission is shuttle commander Mark Kelly, the astronaut husband of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who has undergone months of excruciating rehab after being shot in the head in January. "There is no way she would miss a la

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