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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: Space shuttle Endeavour soared into space on Tuesday, carrying Japan's first space lab to the International Space Station to join US, Russian and European facilities there.
Endeavour blasted into space at 0628 GMT on Tuesday, in a rare night launch from the Kennedy Space Centre, and two minutes after launch successfully jettisoned its twin solid rocket boosters.
Less than nine minutes after launch, Endeavour safely entered Earth's orbit and began its chase of the International Space Station.
Its crew of seven is on a 16-day mission 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.
This mission is the longest at the ISS and will see the Endeavour team, which includes Japanese astronaut Takao Doi, venture out on five space walks, totaling 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 10 billion dollars.
The Europeans joined the elite space grouping in February with the long-overdue delivery of its Columbus laboratory via the Atlantis shuttle.
As with Columbus, 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 Dominic 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 100-billion-dollar project involving 17 countries including 11 members of the European Space Agency (ESA).
On Sunday, ESA carried out the maiden launch of a massive robot freighter designed to rendezvous automatically with the orbital space station, from Kourou, French Guiana.
The cylinder-shaped Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) will deliver seven and a half tons of food, water, pressurized air, fuel and personal items to the ISS crew.
After six months or so, the craft will detach from the ISS, taking with it rubbish accumulated during the station's mission. The trash and freighter will then safely disintegrate over the Pacific, mission scientists say.
- AFP/so
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