Shuttle Endeavour docks successfully with the ISS

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Space huttle Endeavour. Photo:EFE

The Space shuttle Endeavour pulled up to the international space station (ISS) and docked on Thursday morning, kicking off almost two weeks of demanding construction work. "Today was a textbook rendezvous and docking. I couldn't have asked for anything better. Picture perfect", said lead flight director Mike Moses.

The shuttle blasted off from Earth on Tuesday. Before the late-night linkup, Endeavour's commander, Dominic Gorie, guided the shuttle through a 360-degree backflip to allow for full photographic surveillance.

It's one of the many safety-related procedures put in place following the Columbia tragedy in 2003.

The space station crew used cameras with high-powered zoom lenses to photograph Endeavour from nose to tail, especially all the thermal tiles on its belly.

The pictures, as many as 300, will be scrutinized by engineers on the ground. NASA had suspected that something, possibly a bird, may have struck Endeavour's nose nine or 10 seconds after liftoff. But Moses says engineers no longer believe that's the case.

"The debris that we saw at about 10 seconds that appeared to pass over the nose and possibly strike, the imagery analysis has confirmed that it did not strike the orbiter. It actually went behind the SRB (Solid Rocket Booster), so it did not come near the vehicle", Moses told reporters on Thursday.

Besides seven astronauts, one of them Japanese, Endeavour holds the first piece of Japan's new space station lab, Kibo, which is Japanese for "hope".

The storage compartment will be attached to the orbiting complex on Friday, it's a temporary location until the lab arrives in May. Endeavour is also delivering a two-armed Canadian robot, named Dextre, that will be assembled during the first three spacewalks of the mission, as well as a new space station resident, Garrett Reisman.

In all, five spacewalks are planned.