An additional docked day was added to the flight plan to give the crew more time to complete their tasks. STS-126 was scheduled to be a sixteen-day mission with four spacewalks (EVA), largely dedicated to servicing and repair of the Solar Alpha Rotary Joints (SARJ). Bowen was originally assigned to STS-124 but was moved to STS-126 to allow Discovery to rotate Greg Chamitoff with Garrett E. On 21 November 2007, NASA announced a change in the crew manifest due to Higginbotham's decision to leave NASA to take a job in the private sector.
Higginbotham was originally scheduled to fly on STS-126, she was previously mission specialist 4 on STS-116. Due to poor weather at Kennedy Space Center, Endeavour landed at Edwards Air Force Base on 30 November 2008 at 21:25:09 UTC. After spending 15 days, 20 hours, 30 minutes, and 30 seconds docked to the station, during which the crew performed four spacewalks, and transferred cargo, the orbiter undocked on 28 November 2008. Endeavour successfully docked with the station on 16 November 2008. STS-126 launched on 15 November 2008 at 00:55:39 UTC from Launch Pad 39A (LC-39A) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) with no delays or issues. The purpose of the mission, referred to as ULF2 by the ISS program, was to deliver equipment and supplies to the station, to service the Solar Alpha Rotary Joints (SARJ), and repair the problem in the starboard SARJ that had limited its use since STS-120. STS-126 was the one hundred and twenty-fourth NASA Space Shuttle mission, and twenty-second orbital flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour (OV-105) to the International Space Station (ISS).
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