Space station gets lab room

2008-06-04 07:20

Washington - Astronauts attached a bus-sized Japanese laboratory to the International Space Station on Tuesday, giving the orbiting outpost its biggest room and providing Japan with a key foothold in space.

Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and American colleague Karen Nyberg used the station's robotic arm to slowly pull the 15-ton lab out of the cargo bay of shuttle Discovery, which docked on Monday, and attach it to its new home.

Dubbed Kibo ("hope"), Japan's first manned space facility is 11.2m long and has room for four astronauts. Nasa's Destiny module is 8.5m long while Europe's Columbus facility measures 6.8m.

The astronauts are scheduled to activate the cylindrical lab on Wednesday and enter the facility for the first time at around 20:52 GMT.

Kibo's 10m robotic arm, which will manipulate materials and equipment for science experiments, will also be installed during the Discovery mission.

Shuttle Endeavour already brought one piece of the laboratory in March - a logistics module that will be used for storage.

The third and final part of the lab - an outdoor facility that will allow experiments to be exposed to the effects of space - will be delivered next year.

When completed, Kibo will allow astronauts to carry out experiments in space medicine, biology and biotechnology, material production, and communications, both in a pressurised environment and completely exposed to space.

The facility will be jointly monitored from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Tsukuba facility and Nasa Mission Control in Houston, Texas.

Nasa, which hopes to complete construction of the ISS in 2010, considerers the station a central part of space exploration ambitions, allowing scientists to study the effects of microgravity on humans.

- AFP