Shuttle and station crews meet, greet and get to work

By Jeff Franks

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Astronauts from space shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station greeted one another with hugs and smiles on Thursday to begin a joint 12-day mission to install a Japanese laboratory and Canadian robotic system.

Endeavour docked with the space outpost late on Wednesday as they flew 200 miles above Singapore, two days after the shuttle launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

A little later, the hatches were opened and the 10 astronauts from the two ships floated into their happy meeting, then went straight to work.

Endeavour is carrying the first part of Kibo, a Japanese space module that was to be attached to the station during a spacewalk starting on Thursday night.

Kibo, which means "hope" in English, is Japan's primary contribution to the $100 billion station, a project of 15 countries.

Two other sections of Kibo will be flown up on later flights and it will be the largest laboratory on the station when finished early next year.

Endeavour also ferried up a Canadian robotic system known as Dextre, which will be used to perform detailed work on the station exterior that previously required spacewalking astronauts.

The Endeavour crew is scheduled to perform five spacewalks during its stay. On one of them, astronauts will test a heat shield repair technique to prepare for a shuttle mission later this year to work on the Hubble Space Telescope.