Astronauts to Install Space Station's Largest Lab Today

From SPACE.com:

Spacewalkers will help deliver the space station's new Japanese lab today. Astronauts are preparing to venture outside of the International Space Station (ISS) later today to install its new Japanese laboratory and attempt to clean grit out of a gummed up solar wing joint. Spacewalkers Mike Fossum and Ron Garan are preparing to suit up and head outside at 11:32 a.m. EDT (1532 GMT) today, or earlier, if they get ahead of schedule. They have been camping out since Monday night in the station's Quest airlock to prepare today's excursion, the first of three planned during their STS-124 construction flight to the ISS. "It's one big happy spaceship now," said Matt Abbott, lead flight director for Discovery's mission Monday shortly after the shuttle arrived at the station. "It's great to have the Kibo pressurized module part of the International Space Station. All we have to do now is to install it tomorrow." Discovery's seven astronauts are delivering a new crewmember to the station along with its the newest and largest addition — the tour bus-sized main room of the Japanese-built Kibo laboratory. The two spacewalkers - Fossum a veteran spacewalker and Garan a first-timer in space — plan to spend about seven hours outside the station. Fossum, the lead spacewalker, will be identifiable as the one wearing a spacesuit with red stripes. "Our biggest task on EVA 1, our first spacewalk, is really preparing the space station to receive the Japanese module," Fossum said in a preflight NASA interview. "There's some covers and launch locks we have to pull off... All these things have to be done manually and so really we're the blue collar help." By the end of the spacewalk the new room should be moved out of Discovery's payload bay and attached to its new perch on the station.

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