CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The International Space Station's first laboratory is targeted to launch in January, but not much research will be conducted on the station until March.

The U.S. lab, dubbed Destiny, is traveling to its permanent home in space without any experiments because that would make the total package exceed shuttle Atlantis' weight limit. That means space for the 13 refrigerator-sized racks, set aside specifically for scientific experiments, will remain empty until shuttle Discovery launches March 1.

The U.S. lab Destiny is lifted from its KSC work platform in preparation for a planned January 2001 launch. Click to enlarge this NASA image.

The laboratory eventually will hold a total of 24 racks. In the meantime, Destiny will launch with five nonexperimental racks:

• Two will help control the station's position in space and provide more communications equipment for talking to ground stations on Earth.

• The other three will help remove humidity and carbon dioxide that accumulates in the air. The station already has air-cleaning systems, so the air systems on Destiny will serve as backups in case one of the original systems breaks down.

Destiny is the scientific centerpiece of the $60 billion space station, and is expected to be one of six labs attached to the 16-nation station by 2006. The station eventually will grow to about 500 tons and be about the size of a football field.

The lab will be the second heaviest component attached to the station. The recently connected, electricity-producing solar arrays were the heaviest. It will take three spacewalks to connect the lab to the station.

Attaching the lab is only the beginning of the work, however.

On the fifth day of Atlantis' mission, the three-man station crew and the five-person shuttle crew will get busy inside the laboratory.

The shuttle crew, commanded by astronaut Ken Cockrell, mainly will move supplies from the shuttle to the station while the station's crew, led by American astronaut Bill Shepherd, will start to set up the laboratory.

"Then the (International Space Station) crew will be in there forever more," said NASA spokesman James Hartsfield.

As an added bonus, the new module will serve as another room to the station, which now has only three pressurized rooms.

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The shuttle crew will start turning on some of the laboratory's main systems during the sixth day of the mission and the second spacewalk. Gyroscopes, which control the station's orientation, will be turned on in the lab on the seventh day.

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Once those basic systems are set up, housing research can begin in the laboratory. That research has been one of the station's main purposes since its inception during the 1980s.

The first major experiment for the laboratory will be sent up on the Italian-made Multipurpose Logistics Module -- nicknamed Leonardo -- which is the equivalent of the station's U-Haul van. The six racks carried on Leonardo will be moved and installed into Destiny. The module will return empty on the shuttle to be used again on a future mission.

Leonardo and the station's next crew are expected to launch aboard shuttle Discovery on March 1.

Among other things, Leonardo will carry the Human Research Facility rack. Experiments on that rack are designed to study the crew's health and examine how people respond to long-term microgravity. It will look at the crew members' hearts, lungs, muscles, bones, sense of balance, temperature control and wake-sleep cycles.

But the current station crew won't be able to use the lab for science. They must return with the shuttle in March. Discovery will leave behind another three-person station crew, this time led by Russian cosmonaut Yury Usachev. That crew will be the first to do real research on the station.

The following shuttle mission, slated for an April 19 launch, is to deliver another Italian supply module called Raffaello.