The U.S. space shuttle Discovery carrying its crew of seven docked with the International Space Station on Wednesday morning, Japan time. Among the crew is Japanese astronaut Mr. Koichi Wakata. While the Discovery is docked at the ISS, he will set up the ISS' fourth and last solar power panel by using a robotic arm.
Mr. Wakata, now on his third space mission, will stay in the ISS together with a U.S. and a Russian astronaut for about 3 1/2 months — the first "long" stay in the ISS for a Japanese astronaut. He will build up and maintain the Japanese space lab Kibo attached to the ISS and will carry out various experiments, including a test to measure the efficacy of a drug to prevent osteoporosis.
Although Mr. Wakata's activities represent the start of a new era of a manned space project involving Japanese, Japan has to decide which direction its future space development projects should take.