Discovery on mission to deliver Japanese lab

Houston: The main task for space shuttle Discovery's seven-member crew on Sunday was to look for any signs of damage to their ship after launching a day earlier.

Discovery, making its way to the international space station, is carrying the orbiting outpost's biggest room by far - Japan's $1 billion (Dh3.67 billion) lab. The shuttle is also delivering a spare pump for the space station's malfunctioning toilet.

But the inspection of the shuttle will not be as thorough as it normally is because the school-bus-size lab, named Kibo - Japanese for hope - takes up almost the entire payload bay.

That left no room for a 15-metre laser-tipped boom that is attached to the shuttle's 15-metre robotic arm. Usually on a shuttle's second day in space, astronauts use the boom and robotic arm to conduct a meticulous, slow-motion inspection of the spacecraft's wings and nose - the shuttle's most vulnerable areas - for any signs of launch damage. It has become a routine safety procedure ever since the 2003 Columbia accident.

Without the boom, Discovery's robotic arm will only be able to do a partial survey. A more thorough inspection was planned at the halfway point as well as near the end of the 14-day mission after Discovery's crew retrieves a laser-tipped boom left behind at the space station by Endeavour's astronauts when they visited the orbiting outpost in March.