International Space Station update: Both Kibo and toilet operational

The main payload of the current space shuttle mission has now become operational, and we are not referring to the malfunctioning toilet aboard the International Space Station (ISS) here, although the station crew which suffered before relief came aboard the Discovery in the shape of a replacement vacuum pump may beg to differ. No, the payload referred to here is the $1-billion component for the Japanese Kibo space laboratory. (Kibo means hope in Japanese).(See: Action-packed Day 2 for discovery astronauts)

The toilet, being a smaller but no less crucial piece of equipment, was repaired earlier on Wednesday by Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko. Later, as day broke over the skies of Japan on Thursday, the nation's Aerospace Exploration Agency's Tsukuba Space Centre life support systems and other equipment in the laboratory in the Kibo research module.

With this act, Japan established its first system to operate a manned Japanese space facility from inside the country, half a century after Tokyo University Prof. Hideo Itokawa test-launched a pencil-shaped rocket. Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide who transported aboard the ISS in Discovery and is guiding proceedings there, said, ''It's still empty, but this module is full of dreams.''

Hoshide set up a blue noren curtain that read "Kibo" in Japanese at the lab entrance. Wearing a mask and goggles to avoid dust, he opened the hatch and entered the laboratory at 6:09 a.m. Thursday Japan time. After Hoshide checked the lab interior, nine other astronauts entered and spent time floating inside the nearly empty facility.

About 20 officials at the Japanese mission control at the Tsukuba Space Centre stood and clapped when Hoshide entered the Kibo lab. They applauded again when a TV monitor showed the astronauts playfully floating round the laboratory and Hoshide displaying a written message to recruit astronauts.

Later on, spacewalking astronauts worked on the outside Kibo, installing cameras and removing covers. As the spacewalkers, Michael Fossum and Ronald Garan Jr, toiled outside, their eight colleagues hauled more experiment racks into the lab and flight controllers near Tokyo monitored the power systems.

Even with all the racks moving in, Kibo was still noticeably bigger than the eight other rooms at the space station. "We have not seen that much space in space since Skylab," Mission Control told the astronauts in a written message. Skylab was NASA's first space station, back in the 1970s.

Space shuttle Discovery's astronauts delivered and installed Kibo earlier in the week. There are now three labs at the orbiting complex, supplied by NASA, the European Space Agency and, now, the Japanese Space Agency.

On Friday, the astronauts will attach a storage shed to Kibo that was dropped off by another shuttle crew in March. And on Saturday, they will test drive Kibo's 33-foot robot arm. The two TV cameras that were set up on the lab's exterior Thursday will be instrumental in those robot-arm operations.

One last spacewalk is planned for Sunday, to replace an empty nitrogen-gas tank at the space station.