CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Shuttle Endeavour and its crew of seven began a planned eight-day stay at the International Space Station Friday.

STS-111

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With veteran commander Ken Cockrell at the controls of the shuttle, docking took place at 12:25 p.m. EDT (1625 GMT) as the complex flew 240 miles (386 kilometers) above the South Pacific near New Zealand.

"Endeavour, arriving. Expedition Five, arriving," announced Dan Bursch, a Navy captain, as he rang the space station's bell from within the Unity node.

It will take about two hours for the connections between the shuttle and outpost to be checked, seals tested for air leaks and the hatches themselves opened. Some initial problems aligning the docking hardware may delay the plan somewhat.

At that point the Expedition Four crew of Bursch, Carl Walz and commander Yuri Onufrienko will welcome aboard their replacement Expedition Five crew and the members of the STS-111 Endeavour crew.

The 10 humans are scheduled to stage a short ceremony and then proceed with a safety briefing so the newcomers can become familiar with some of the more critical emergency systems and escape procedures.

Then almost immediately the busy work of exchanging crews and unloading supplies and equipment will begin.

By the end of their work day Friday the Expedition Four crew are to officially become part of the shuttle crew, while the new station residents of Valery Korzun, Sergei Treschev and Peggy Whitson are to spend their first night in their home for the next five months.

While a formal change-in-command ceremony isn't scheduled until Monday, practical evidence of the transfer will come when the Soyuz spacecraft seat liners, which are custom built for each station crewmember, are exchanged.

At that point, should something catastrophic happen aboard the frontier outpost, the Expedition Four crewmembers would return to Earth in the shuttle and the Expedition Five crewmembers would bailout in the Soyuz lifeboat.

During the next week the major events on the timeline include:

• Installing the Italian Leonardo module to the Unity node, opening its hatches and then unloading more than three tons of provisions and equipment, including two new science racks for the U.S. Destiny laboratory.

• Repacking the module to near capacity with unneeded supplies, equipment and garbage for the return to Earth inside Endeavour's cargo bay.

• Staging three spacewalks from the station's Quest airlock. All three extravehicular activities will help enable future station assembly operations using the station's Canadarm2.

This 14th visit of a space shuttle to the station is scheduled to end with undocking scheduled for June 15 at 10:32 a.m. EDT (1432 GMT).

Endeavour's two-day trip home to Florida should culminate with a landing at the Kennedy Space Center on June 17 at 11:49 a.m. EDT (1549 GMT).