Associated Press
With astronauts hustling inside and out, the International Space Station got its biggest live-in addition yet, a Japanese lab stretching 37 feet (11 meters) that opens for business Wednesday. (See a diagram of the lab.)
Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide had the honor of installing the Kibo (Japanese for "hope") lab, valued at a million U.S. dollars. He used the space station's robot arm to nudge the bus-size lab into place.
(Watch video of the lab installation.)
"We have a new hope on the International Space Station," announced Hoshide.
NASA's deputy space station program manager, Kirk Shireman, later noted, "It was an amazing day."
The drama is to continue Wednesday afternoon, when the ten astronauts on the shuttle and station open the doors to the lab and float in.
(Background on the new lab: "'Lexus' of Space Station Labs Slated for Launch" [May 27, 2008].)
A far more mundane matter is on tap for the morning: toilet repairs.
Space shuttle Discovery's crew hand-delivered a new pump for the space station's malfunctioning toilet, and the two Russians on board planned to install it. The job was expected to last two hours.
The space station crew has been forced to flush manually with extra water several times a day, ever since the toilet broke two weeks ago. The problem is confined to the urine side of the commode.
Installing the Lab
The long process of installing Kibo began with a spacewalk by Michael Fossum and Ronald Garan, Jr.
