Shuttle docks with space station

Space shuttle Endeavour today docked with the international space station, kicking off almost two weeks of demanding construction work.

Before the link-up, 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 scrutinised by engineers on the ground to see whether the shuttle suffered any damage during Tuesday’s launch.

Something, maybe a bird, may have struck Endeavour’s nose nine or 10 seconds after liftoff.

“It’s too early to speculate,” chairman of the mission management team LeRoy Cain said late Wednesday afternoon. “The team has got a lot of work to do on that as well as other debris items.

“There’s nothing that stands out in terms of things that we’re worried about,” Mr Cain said.

The photographs preceding the docking will add to NASA’s arsenal of data for determining whether Endeavour will be able to re-enter safely at the end of its 16-day flight, the longest space station mission ever by a shuttle. All the analysis will take several days.