The space shuttle Atlantisblasted off from Florida today to install a 6-1/2 tonne air lock on the International Space Station that will allow the station crew to exit for spacewalks.
Atlantisblasted off at 5:04 a.m. (9.04 a.m. Irish time) from the Kennedy Space Center.
Years of work remain before the station is complete but once the air lock in the shuttle's cargo bay is installed, the orbiting outpost will be a fully functioning space station.
The air lock will allow the station crew to make repairs outside the station. Astronauts will make three spacewalks during the 11-day mission to install the air lock.
This mission is the 10th dedicated to building the orbiting science outpost and marks the end of the first assembly phase of the 33-month-old complex, NASA said.
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Atlantis space shuttle crew - Clockwise from lower left: Commander Steven Lindsey, Michael Gernhardt, Janet Kavandi, James Reilly and Pilot Charles Hobaugh.
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If there is a question mark hanging over this mission, it is the performance of the space station's new robotic arm, delivered and installed during an April shuttle flight.
The robot arm, one of the most sophisticated and complex pieces of machinery ever carried into space, has been giving the three-person station crew trouble during tests, sometimes stalling in mid-operation.
The arm, acting on commands from an astronaut on the station, must hoist the air lock from Atlantis's cargo bay and move it to its new berth on the station's Unity module.
NASA and the Canadian Space Agency, which owns the arm, said that the robot's primary systems appear to work fine and the trouble has been with back-up systems that may not be needed for the operation.
The Atlantis crew is led by Steven Lindsey, a lieut col in the US Air Force. He is joined by pilot Charles Hobaugh, aUS Marine Corps major making his first flight, and Janet Kavandi, the flight engineer and robot-arm operator on her third flight.
Rounding out the crew are Michael Gernhardt, taking his fourth trip into space, and James Reilly, on his second trip.