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 During a scheduled 6 1/2 hour spacewalk, astronauts Michael Fossum and Ronald Garan Jr. will prep the $1 billion lab, named Kibo
-- Japanese for hope -- for installation by removing power and heating cables and various restraints that connect it to the shuttle. Later in the day, astronauts working from inside will use the space station's robot arm to lift the bus-size lab from the shuttle and anchor it to the station.
"We're looking forward to a great day, an exciting day to install the Japanese Kibo module," Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, who will help move the lab, said Tuesday as astronauts examined spacesuits and made other preparations for the spacewalk.
Kibo, at 37 feet long, is bigger than the U.S. and European labs already attached to the space station.
The spacewalkers were also going to remove a 50-foot inspection boom from the orbiting complex and try out some cleaning methods on a jammed solar rotating joint that has hampered energy production at the space station since last fall. The joint enables the space station's solar arrays, which provide electrical power, to rotate and track the sun.
"It's going to lead to a really busy day for all of those guys," said Emily Nelson, a space station flight director.
The first job for the spacewalk will be transferring the boom from the space station to the shuttle.
The laser-equipped boom is usually attached to the shuttle's robotic arm and used to conduct a detailed inspection of the spacecraft's wings and nose. The inspection is one of the safety measures put in place by NASA after the 2003 Columbia accident to check for launch damage.
Discovery didn't have enough room for the inspection boom; Kibo filled the entire payload bay. So the last shuttle crew left one behind at the space station in March.
The shuttle astronauts, who arrived at the space station on Monday, will use the boom next week to check Discovery for any damage that could endanger them during re-entry.
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 Imagery experts, in the meantime, are poring over the 302 digital pictures that the space station crew took of Discovery's belly right before the docking.
About five pieces of foam insulation broke off Discovery's external fuel tank during liftoff, but are not believed to have caused any damage.
NASA, meanwhile, is investigating the worst launch pad damage in 27 years of space shuttle flight.
A large section of the flame trench -- 20 feet by 75 feet -- broke apart, and chunks of the large heat-resistant fire bricks and concrete mortar were scattered all the way past the chain-link fence 1,800 feet away. The fence was damaged in places.
None of the debris appeared to hit Discovery, said LeRoy Cain, chairman of the mission management team.
The flame trench -- dating back to the 1960s Apollo era and designed to deflect the exhaust of the booster rockets
-- is inspected regularly and undergoes periodic repair, Cain said.
NASA does not need to use the pad again until the next shuttle launch in October. That mission
-- the final trip to the Hubble Space Telescope -- should not be delayed as a result of the damage, Cain said.
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On the Net:
NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/
[Associated
Press; By JUAN A. LOZANO]
Copyright 2008 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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