Discovery docks with space station

Space shuttle Discovery docked with the international space station today, delivering its newest inhabitant – a German astronaut who will return the orbiting complex’s crew to three for the first time in three years.

The shuttle’s jets cut off and space station latches automatically hooked onto the shuttle as the two travelled 17,500 miles per hour, about 220 miles above Earth.

Once the hatch opens, at 5.52pm Irish time, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter plans to move his seat liner to the Russian Soyuz spacecraft attached to the space laboratory, marking his transfer to the space station’s crew.

An hour before the docking, Discovery commander Steve Lindsey manually steered the shuttle’s nose up and slowly flipped the spacecraft over so the space station’s crew could photograph its belly for any signs of damage.

The space station’s two residents, Pavel Vinogradov and Jeff Williams, planned to transmit the digital images back to Houston, where mission managers and engineers would study them.