WASHINGTON : The US space shuttle Endeavour, with a crew of seven on board including Japanese astronaut Takao Doi, docked Wednesday at the International Space Station, NASA said.

Shuttle Commander Dominic Gorie completed the manoeuvre at 11:49 pm (0349 GMT Thursday), about 40 minutes later than scheduled.

The rendezvous took place over Singapore, roughly 48 hours after Endeavour blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a NASA TV commentator said.

A bell rang on the station to welcome the shuttle on board, a tradition borrowed from nautical practice.

If all goes well the crew will open the hatches between the shuttle and the orbiting space lab at 1:08 am (0508 GMT), after conducting pressure and leak checks, the US space agency said.

The crews then begin 12 days of joint operations to include initial work installing a Japanese laboratory that is to become the largest and last research module of the International Space Station.

With its installation Japan gains a foothold on the ISS alongside the United States, Russia and Europe, whose laboratory Columbus was delivered to the station in February.

Endeavour's crew intends to install the first stage of the Japanese laboratory named Kibo, a micro-gravity research facility which aims to open a vital new stage in deeper space exploration.

When all three stages are installed, Kibo, which means "hope" in Japanese, will complete the research nucleus of the ISS along with the American, Russian and European laboratories.

The 16-day mission is the longest at the ISS and will see the crew venture out on five space walks, totalling about 30 hours of work.

Kibo will be the largest by far of the four research modules on board the station and represents Japan's most important offering to the project, to which the island nation has contributed a total of US$10 billion.

As with the Columbus lab, the installation of Kibo on the ISS was delayed when the February 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster put all launches by the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) on hold for two years.

Several of Kibo's experiments, focusing in part on medicine, biology, biotechnology and communications, are seen as crucial steps in preparing further missions to the Moon and even human missions to Mars.

The first stage being delivered is ELM-PS, a 4.2-ton logistics module measuring 3.9 meters (12.8 feet) long and 4.4 meters (14.4 feet) in diameter.

Its key component, the Pressurized Module (PM) with a remote-control robotic arm, is expected to be transported to the ISS on space shuttle Discovery due to launch May 25.

The PM is a massive 11.2-meter-long (36.7 feet) cylinder weighing 15.9 tons.

The final Kibo instalment, an inter-orbit communications system unit called the Exposed Facility, is due for delivery in March 2009.

Endeavour will also deliver a piece of hardware from Canada - a component for the robotic arm named Dextre, which is used for delicate tasks normally reserved for an astronaut on a space walk.

Commander Gorie, 50, leads a team comprising co-pilot Gregory Johnson, 45, mission specialists Rick Linnehan, 50, Robert Behnken, 37, Mike Foreman, 50, Garret Reisman, 40, and Doi, 53, from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Four of the astronauts will be making their maiden voyages into space.

After this mission NASA plans another 10, including four more in 2008, to complete construction of the ISS by September 30, 2010, when NASA's three-shuttle fleet is to be retired.

The ISS is a US$100 billion project involving 17 countries including 11 members of the European Space Agency (ESA). - AFP/ch