This
story was updated at 8:23 p.m. EDT.
HOUSTON —
Astronauts christened the International Space Station's (ISS) giant Japanese
room with warm words and smiles Wednesday, officially opening the tour
bus-sized Kibo science module aboard the orbiting laboratory.
Japanese
astronaut Akihiko Hoshide opened the massive $1 billion Kibo laboratory at 5:05
p.m. EDT (2105 GMT) with a short speech before he and nine crewmates floated
into its roomy interior a few minutes later.
"This is a
great moment for the Japanese folks," Hoshide said. "One engineer down on Earth
said it looks very empty, but it's full of dreams, and I really think that's
what it is."
Hoshide and
NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg were the first to float into gleaming Kibo module.
They wore face masks and goggles to protect against any loose debris that may
have been floating around.
But caution
soon gave way to orbital play as all 10 astronauts aboard the docked station
and shuttle Discovery bounced
off Kibo's curved walls, struck poses for photographs and performed
weightless somersaults and flips.
"It was
just the coolest moment for me," space station flight director Annette Hasbrook
said of the opening. "You watched them just fly in, and they shot through the
module. It was just outstanding."
Weighing in
at nearly 15 tons, Japan's
Kibo laboratory is the largest room ever launched to the space station. It
is almost 37 feet (11.2 meters) long, about 14.4 feet (4.4 meters) wide and has
its own airlock, two windows and a robotic arm. Japanese engineers are watching
over the new module from the country's Tsukuba Space Center to the north of
Tokyo.
Built by
the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the main Kibo lab launched toward
the space station last Saturday aboard NASA's shuttle Discovery. The shuttle's
STS-124 astronaut crew, commanded by veteran U.S. spaceflyer Mark Kelly, is
charged with performing three spacewalks to install Kibo and swap out one
member of the station's three-man crew.
Astronauts
will add a second piece to the Kibo facility, an attic-like
storage module already aboard the station, on Friday. A third segment - a
porch-like external platform for experiments and a smaller robotic arm - are
slated to be launched to the station next year.
The new
laboratory is so large it was launched nearly empty, with many of its equipment
racks tucked away in its storage module atop the station's hub-like Harmony
connecting node. Kelly has called Kibo's main room the "Lexus
of space station modules."
"I know
it's been like 20 plus years to get this module up in space," Hoshide said of
Kibo, whose name means "hope" in Japanese. "It's a beautiful module, and we
have a new 'hope' on the space station."
Kibo's
successful opening came just hours after station astronauts successfully
repaired a broken
Russian space toilet aboard the orbiting laboratory, and one day after the
new Japanese module itself was installed during a Tuesday spacewalk.
Shuttle
astronauts also successfully tested the delicate laser and camera sensors at
the tip of Discovery's heat shield inspection boom, which they retrieved
Tuesday after months in storage outside the station.
The main
Kibo laboratory is the third new room to be added to the station this year. In
addition to its storage room and a Canadian maintenance robot, which a previous
shuttle crew delivered in March, the station also received the European Space
Agency's $2 billion Columbus laboratory during a February shuttle flight.
"We're
missing the Europeans and the Canadian crewmembers up here, but this is an
international program," Hoshide said. "The Kibo lab is open!"
With
Japan's new space lab open for business, astronauts aboard Discovery and the
station will now turn their attention to their next spacewalk on Thursday, a
6.5-hour excursion aimed at priming Kibo for orbital spaceflight.
"We will
continue another busy day tomorrow," said Tetsuro Yokoyama, JAXA's deputy Kibo
operations project manager.
NASA is
broadcasting Discovery's STS-124 mission live on NASA TV
on Saturday. Click here for
SPACE.com's shuttle mission updates and NASA TV feed.
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