Monday, June 9, 2008

STS-124 Halfway Report

Everything is going well on STS-124. There seems to be no problem with damage of the orbiter's heat shield tiles, the new toilet has been successfully installed on ISS, and things are going smoothly with the installation of a much larger and more sophisticated piece of hardware, Japan's Kibo laboratory.

Kibo has its own robotic arm, which will allow astronauts to tend to experiments exposed to space on Kibo without doing a spacewalk. The arm was tested for the first time yesterday, and all went well.

The Kibo arm gives ISS two robotic arms. The Canadarm, however, is much larger and can be moved along the outside of the station, whereas Kibo's arm is fixed in its location on the Japanese module.

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