By SPA,
Cape Canaveral, Florida : 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.
Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide had the honor of installing the billion-dollar lab, named Kibo, which means hope, just as two crewmates were winding up a spacewalk Tuesday. He used the space station’s robot arm to nudge the bus-size lab into place.
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 was to continue Wednesday afternoon, when the 10 space fliers on the linked shuttle and station open the doors to the lab and float in.
A far more mundane matter was 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 Associated Press reported.