Endeavor Docks at Space Station

March 13, 2008 -- The seven crew members of the space shuttle Endeavour boarded the International Space Station after docking high over Southeast Asia, NASA said Thursday.

The space rendezvous took place 212 miles over Singapore at 0349 GMT, two days after Endeavour blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a NASA TV commentator said.

A bell rang on the ISS after docking was complete to welcome the shuttle on board, in a tradition borrowed from nautical practice.

Hatches between the shuttle and the space station were opened at 0528 GMT, and the three ISS residents and seven Endeavour crew members, including Japanese astronaut Takao Doi, greeted one another with hearty hugs.

"Today was a textbook rendez-vous and docking. I couldn't have asked for anything better. Picture perfect," flight director Mike Moses told reporters at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

About an hour before docking, shuttle commander Dominic Gorie guided the spacecraft through a back-flip maneuver while the ISS crew took some 300 digital pictures of the underbelly of the space shuttle.

The pictures were to be sent to Earth and analyzed for signs of potential damage to the shuttle's thermal tiles, a routine procedure since the space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003.

Columbia disintegrated re-entering Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven on board, because its thermal shield had been damaged when it was struck by a piece of debris during launch.

Gorie then painstakingly guided the shuttle toward the ISS, carefully aligning the two spacecraft with respective masses of 120 and 320 tonnes, hurtling through space at 18,000 miles per hour.

The crews now begin 12 days of joint operations to include initial work installing a Japanese laboratory that is to become the largest and last research module of the International Space Station.

With its installation Japan gains a foothold on the ISS alongside the United States, Russia and Europe, whose laboratory Columbus was delivered to the station in February.