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 The Russian compartment, named Rassvet, or Dawn, was installed by the Atlantis crew earlier this week. Station commander Oleg Kotov had the honor of opening it up.
"Everything is normal," Kotov reported. "Everything looks great."
Kotov wore goggles and a mask as he peeked inside and hooked up an air filter. It was a precaution in case of floating dust, paint flakes or other debris.
The compartment -- 20 feet long and 8 feet in diameter -- is crammed with food, laptop computers and other supplies provided by NASA. The space station crew doesn't plan to unload the provisions until Atlantis leaves Sunday.
One last major chore awaits the shuttle astronauts: a spacewalk on Friday to finish replacing space station batteries. Four fresh batteries were plugged in during Wednesday's spacewalk. The crew also untangled a cable on Atlantis' inspection boom and fixed a loose antenna on the station.
After nearly a week of stressful work in orbit, the six shuttle astronauts finally got a chance to relax Thursday. Mission Control gave them part of the day off.
This is NASA's last planned flight of Atlantis. The shuttle and its crew are due back on Earth next Wednesday.
Only two shuttle missions remain, by Discovery and Endeavour this fall. Once the fleet is retired, NASA will focus on getting astronauts to an asteroid and Mars by 2025 and 2035, respectively. That's the plan laid out earlier this year by President Barack Obama.
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On the Net:
NASA:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/
shuttle/main/index.html
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