Crew at Space shuttle Endeavour

Here's a look at the Endeavour crew:

* Commander Dominic Gorie, 50, of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Miami, Florida; Married, with two children; a former Naval pilot on his fourth spaceflight and the only Endeavour astronaut to have previously visited the station. Concerned about crew fatigue during a mission packed with five spacewalks and virtually non-stop robotics operations, Gorie petitioned for a 16th day in orbit to give his crew some extra time off.

* Pilot Gregory Johnson, 45, of South Ruislip, Middlesex, Britain; Married, with three children; a U.S. Air Force colonel on his first spaceflight. Johnson, the lead operator for both the station and the shuttle robotic arms, says he used to play a lot of video games as a kid.

* Flight engineer Michael Foreman, 50, of Columbus and Wadsworth, Ohio; Married, with three children; a U.S. Navy captain on his first spaceflight. Foreman is scheduled to make three spacewalks.

* Lead spacewalker Richard Linnehan, 50, of Lowell, Massachusetts; Single; a veterinarian-turned-astronaut on his fourth spaceflight. Linnehan, whose last mission was to service the Hubble Space Telescope, said he expects it is going to be a lot more exhausting working on the space station. "There's a lot of real estate to cover", he said.

* Japanese astronaut Takao Doi, 53, of Tokyo; Married; holds dual doctorate degrees in aerospace engineering and astronomy. During his one previous spaceflight in 1997, Doi became the first Japanese astronaut to conduct a spacewalk. He said he is intrigued with the idea of how Japanese culture and philosophy will adapt to life in space. "We do not look at nature as something to be conquered", he said.

* Rookie Robert Behnken, 37, of St. Ann, Missouri; Single; a former Air Force lead flight test engineer on his first spaceflight. Behnken favored math and science while in high school just because he liked the subjects. "It wasn't something I did because I thought NASA would appreciate if I had taken a couple years of physics while I was in high school or a couple years of chemistry while I was in high school", he said.

* Space station flight engineer Garrett Reisman, 40, of Parsippany, New Jersey; Married, no children. Reisman, who is on his first spaceflight, will join the Expedition 16 station crew and remain aboard when the next crew arrives at the outpost in April. Reisman made it through training in Star City, Russia, without a translator. His Russian will come in handy when his new crewmates arrive as both are Russian.