The Space Shuttle Endeavour was canceled from departure due to technical problems. The orbiter had to departure from Edwards Air Force Base, California to Florida, but the technicians discovered that three of eight pins which were used to secure one of the aerodynamic cones to the orbiter’s tail weren’t right-sized.

Endeavour is one of the three operational orbiters in the Space Shuttle fleet of NASA, among Discovery and Atlantis. Space Shuttle Endeavour was the fifth and last NASA space shuttle to be built and it landed at Edwards Air Force Base on November 30, 2008 after it had completed its mission STS-126 to the International Space Station, which had been launched on November 14.

Alan Brown, spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, stated that the wrong sized pins "were just microscopically oversized," but that the technicians taking care of the mission were able to reduce them to their normal size.

Also two scheduled landings at Kennedy Space Center were canceled, but that happened because of poor weather conditions. Yet, Endeavour will be transported to Kennedy Space Center atop NASA’s Shuttle Carrier Aircraft on December 9. The landing at Edwards on November 30 was the conclusive end after 16 days of mission to the International Space Station.

The Congress of the United States allowed the construction of Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1987 and it had been built to replace the former one, “Challenger,” which had got lost in an accident a year earlier. Some structural spares from Discovery and Atlantis were used for Endeavour’s construction.
The orbiter will be out of mission in 2010 after it will serve for 18 years, together with Discovery and Atlantis.