At 5:15 a.m. EDT, space shuttle Endeavour began the nine-minute Rendezvous Pitch Maneuver, or “backflip.” With Commander Mark Kelly at the controls, Endeavour is rotating 360 degrees backward to enable space station astronauts Dmitry Kondratyev, Paolo Nespoli and Cady Coleman to take high resolution pictures of the shuttle’s heat shield.
Kelly then will fly the shuttle through a quarter circle to a position about 400 feet directly in front of the station. Docking is scheduled for 6:16 a.m.