In the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, members of the STS-124 crew look over the scientific airlock in the Kibo pressurized module. Image credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

STS-124 will launch the main segment of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's – or JAXA’s – station laboratory. Kibo’s Japanese Pressurized Module, or JPM, is 14.4 feet in diameter and 36.7 feet long, so big that it barely fits inside Discovery's payload bay.

The bus-sized module will be the station’s largest laboratory and will be the second component of Japan's laboratory complex to fly to the station. The first, the Japanese Experiment Logistics Module, was launched in March on shuttle mission STS-123.

The Kibo pressurized module weighs in at 32,000 pounds. It’s so large that the shuttle’s Orbiter Boom Sensor System was left at the station during the last mission. There’s not room in Discovery's cargo bay for both the boom and the lab.

And the module is so heavy that only its primary set of avionics systems can be launched inside it. The second set was launched in the logistics module delivered on STS-123 so that it will be available, if needed, when Kibo is activated.

“Kibo is just a beautiful piece of work,” said lead shuttle flight director Matt Abbott. “I know the Japanese space agency had an element installed on STS-123, but this is really their pride and joy. This module is amazing.”

Not just in terms of size.

“It’s going to be a world-class laboratory,” said astronaut Mark Kelly, Discovery's commander. “It’s its own little spacecraft, in the sense that it has an environmental system, electrical system, its own computer system, its own robotic arm. It’s got a lot of capability, and I’m hopeful that over the years that laboratory produces significant discoveries in the fields of chemistry, physics, material science, life sciences. It certainly has that potential.”

The Kibo laboratory complex includes two robotic arms that also will be delivered on STS-124. A third and final shuttle mission to complete the complex will launch an exterior platform for the Kibo laboratory complex that will allow experiments to be exposed to space.

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, STS-124 mission specialist, participates in an exercise in the systems engineering simulator at the Johnson Space Center. Image credit: NASA

“This is a big step for the Japanese community, the science community especially, because that means that they can start their own science," said Discovery Mission Specialist Akihiko Hoshide, a Japanese astronaut. Hoshide will install the module using the space station’s robotic arm and will be the first to float inside the lab once it is opened.

On Earth, STS-124 will mark the first time the JAXA flight control team will activate and control a module from Kibo Mission Control in Tsukuba, Japan. JAXA is scheduled to take over final activation of Kibo on the fifth day of STS-124, the day after the module is installed.

“That’s a big day for Japan,” Hoshide said. “We’ll be doing vestibule outfitting, which is basically hooking up all the jumper connections between Node 2 and the pressurized module for power signals, data cables, fluid lines, all that stuff. Once that’s done we will be activating the main computer in the pressurized module from our laptop computer inside the station – we call that the initial activation.

“Then, once the computer’s activated, the Mission Control Center in Tsukuba Space Center can start commanding, so we’ll hand it over to them. They will start doing the final activation of the module.”

That’s the part that NASA Lead Space Station Flight Director Annette Hasbrook is most looking forward to.

“It’ll be my ‘this is really cool’ moment,” she said.

Hasbrook has been working with JAXA toward this goal since 1999, and has watched as NASA ground control teams developed relationships with their JAXA counterparts. It’s been a learning experience for both sides, she said, but a rewarding one.

“You really see the rapport developing between the flight controllers of each nation’s control center,” Hasbrook said. “That’s been a lot of fun to watch, the development of that and the evolution. In both cases we started out with young flight controllers, not that experienced in their system, and on the Japanese side, they hadn’t done manned spaceflight before. Now they’ve done the planning and the training and they’re getting ready to fly.”

These seven astronauts take a break from training to pose for the STS-124 crew portrait. From the left are astronauts Gregory E. Chamitoff, Michael E. Fossum, both STS-124 mission specialists; Kenneth T. Ham, pilot; Mark E. Kelly, commander; Karen L. Nyberg, Ronald J. Garan and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Akihiko Hoshide, all mission specialists. Image credit: NASA

The STS-124 timeline will vary slightly from those of recent shuttle flights. For example, Discovery's heat shield inspections will occur later than usual. Normally the boom sensor system is attached to the shuttle robotic arm on the second day of a mission to ensure the shuttle wasn’t damaged during launch.

Since the boom is stowed on the station, Discovery's crew will use only cameras at the end of the shuttle's robotic arm to conduct an inspection before the shuttle docks to the station. Even that will be limited, however, since the camera on the arm’s elbow joint, which helps the astronauts steer the arm, must be strapped down to make sure it doesn’t contact the Japanese module during launch.

“We’ll be doing some survey of the upper surfaces of the wings, primarily, but not much more than that because the reach is very limited for the arm in that configuration,” Abbott said. “So we won’t be getting the kind of information that we usually get then. But later on we will do a focused inspection using the boom, after we get docked.”

Discovery will receive a thorough inspection after it undocks. An extra day has been added to the STS-124 schedule after undocking to give ground teams ample time to review the data before landing.

In addition to Commander Kelly and Hoshide, the STS-124 crew consists of Pilot Ken Ham, Mission Specialists Karen Nyberg, Ron Garan, Mike Fossum and Greg Chamitoff. Chamitoff will replace Expedition 16/17 Flight Engineer Garrett Reisman and remain aboard the station as a member of the Expedition 17 crew. Reisman will return to Earth with the STS-124 crew.

Space shuttle Endeavour’s next flight to the International Space Station will truly be an international endeavor.

“This is the first flight where we actually have all the partners,” said Dana Weigel, the lead station flight director. “It’s not just ‘a Japanese flight,’ or ‘a Canadian flight.’ This flight truly is the first time that it requires every single partner actively participating to make everything work. I think that’s a great milestone.”

Image above: Attired in training versions of their shuttle launch and entry suits, the STS-123 crew members await the start of a training session in the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility at Johnson Space Center. From the right are astronauts Dominic L. Gorie, commander; Gregory H. Johnson, pilot; Richard M. Linnehan, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Takao Doi, Robert L. Behnken, all mission specialists; Garrett E. Reisman, Expedition 16 flight engineer; and Michael J. Foreman, mission specialist. Image credit: NASA

Topping the list of milestones is the delivery of part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s module, marking the beginning of the agency’s presence on the station. The Japanese Experiment Logistics Module, Pressurized Section – called the JLP – is really just the warm-up act for JAXA. It will contain critical avionics and serve as a storage area for experiment materials. At 14.4 feet in diameter and 12.8 feet in length, it is the smaller of two pressurized Japanese modules. Combined with other elements, they will make up Kibo, the station’s Japanese complex, named for the Japanese word for hope. Kibo’s main facility and its robotic arm are scheduled to launch on the following shuttle mission, and a "front porch" that will allow astronauts to expose experiments directly to space will be delivered later.

But small or not, what the module represents is big.

“Many people have worked many years to come to this point,” JAXA astronaut and Mission Specialist Takao Doi said. “With this mission, the real Japanese manned space program can begin.”

Doi will be the first person to venture inside the module, which will be installed on the zenith – or upper – side of the Harmony Node installed last year. He said he’s already thinking about how he’ll mark the moment. His commander, Dominic Gorie, said he’s looking forward to hearing it.

“That’s going to be a very exciting, rewarding part of the flight,” Gorie said. “To see Takao’s face, knowing that he’s a JAXA astronaut, delivering their first piece of hardware, is going to be really exciting.”

But all that excitement will come early on in the mission. On the first spacewalk, mission specialists Rick Linnehan and Garrett Reisman will go outside to prepare the module for installation, and Doi will install the module from inside using the shuttle’s robotic arm.

“That will kind of be the big climax at the beginning, but we’ll be done by the end of flight day 4,” Lead Shuttle Flight Director Mike Moses said. “We still have 12 more days to go.”

Twelve days – not to mention four more spacewalks – is more than some missions get in total. This flight is the first to go into the mission planning to take full advantage of the Station to Shuttle Power Transfer System. Other shuttle flights have been able to use the system to glean extra power from the station and extend their flight, but the decision to do so was always made after the shuttle was in orbit.

Endeavour is launching with the expectation of staying in space for 16 days, and there are always extra days set aside in case weather or a technical problem delays landing.

“We have the potential to be on orbit for a very long time,” Moses said. “When we were building our timeline, we were talking about flight day 14 – that’s usually landing day. That’s undocking day for me. My teams are going, ‘What? We’re still in orbit?’”

After getting the JAXA module installed, the crew’s attention – at least as far as spacewalks go – will turn to the Canadian Space Agency’s newest contribution to the station, the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator. Dubbed Dextre by a Canada-wide naming contest, the robot, with its two small robotic arms, will attach to the station’s robotic arm, Canadarm2, and allow astronauts to replace hardware outside the station without doing a spacewalk.

It’s a complicated piece of hardware, and because it is launched in several pieces, some assembly will be required.

“It’s going to take a few spacewalks to put that thing together,” Gorie said. “It’s quite a Tinkertoy project – but much more complicated that what we’re used to as children.”

Image to left: Astronauts Michael J. Foreman and Robert L. Behnken (partially obscured), both STS-123 mission specialists, are about to be submerged in the waters of the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory near Johnson Space Center. Foreman and Behnken are attired in training versions of their Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) spacesuits. Divers are in the water to assist the crewmembers in their rehearsal, intended to help prepare them for work on the exterior of the International Space Station. Image credit: NASA

Dextre will launch as two arms, two wrist end effectors and a main body attached to a pallet. The crew will take the pallet out of the shuttle’s cargo bay and attach it to the station. Then, after the JLP work is done during the early portion of the first spacewalk, Linnehan and Reisman will spend the remainder of that spacewalk beginning the Dextre assembly. All of the second spacewalk and part of the third will be devoted to finishing the assembly.

“It’s funny – we’re the 1J/A mission, for Japanese/American,” Moses said. “But there should be a C in our title, too. If you look at our mission, Dextre requires the biggest chunk of spacewalk time. Literally, from the day we dock until flight day 9, we’re doing something with Dextre almost every day.”

The final two spacewalks of the mission will come on flight days 11 and 13. The fourth spacewalk will be used to replace a remote power control module and test a shuttle tile repair material. The repair material test was originally scheduled for Discovery’s mission last October, but was rescheduled so that problems with the station’s solar arrays could be addressed. The goal is to complete this test before space shuttle Atlantis flies to the Hubble Space Telescope in August, in case a tile repair is needed on that mission. Unlike missions to the space station, Atlantis’ crew members wouldn’t be able to wait on the station for another shuttle to bring them home if Atlantis was damaged.

And on the fifth spacewalk, mission specialists Robert L. Behnken and Mike Foreman will store on the station the boom that attaches to the shuttle’s robotic arm for heat shield inspections. The boom is being stored on orbit since the next shuttle will not have enough room to carry both the boom and the larger JAXA module in the cargo bay.

Gorie and Pilot Gregory H. Johnson will perform Endeavour’s inspection on flight day 12, before the boom is stowed, rather than after the shuttle undocks as is normal. That’s just one of the many robotic arm tasks set for the crew inside the station to do when no one is outside on a spacewalk. Of the 16 days Endeavour will be in space, robotics work is planned for 12 – in addition to the inside work needed to outfit the JLP and the outfitting work planned for Columbus, the European laboratory which will have been on orbit only a few weeks. Plus, Reisman will have some moving to do – he’ll be staying on the station after the shuttle leaves, trading places with European Space Agency astronaut Léopold Eyharts.

Still, everyone agrees that all the hard work will be well worth it.

“Everyone’s unbelievably excited,” Moses said. “Their hardware has been ready to go for years, and we’re now finally going to be able to launch it. Everybody says, ‘Wow, you guys have a busy mission … and thank you very much.”