Mike Possum and Ron Garan, with the help of a Japanese astronaut working inside the shuttle, managed to release the Kibo component from the shuttle Discovery and attach it to the station
Tonight (Tuesday) the first spacewalk of mission STS-124 took place. Astronauts Mike Possum and Ron Garan stayed outside the station while Karen Nyberg and Akihiko Hoshida used the station's robotic arm to move the Japanese space lab's compressed component Kibo from the shuttle's cargo deck and attach it to the harmonic component.
On the next spacewalk the day after tomorrow, the astronauts will connect the extension part with special sensors on it to the robotic arm of the shuttle. This component was left on the previous Space Shuttle mission STS-123 to the International Space Station, to make room for the Kibo Laboratory. Because of this, the Discovery astronauts have not yet scanned the shuttle's heat shield tiles to find out if some of these tiles were damaged during launch. This procedure is carried out as part of the routine process of the shuttle missions on the first day of the journey, on the way to the space station, but this time it will be done as mentioned when the shuttle is already at the station.
