Guide Note

NASA is launching Discovery on May 31, 2008, to the International Space Station to deliver a pump for a malfunctioning toilet. The shuttle is also carrying a Japanese space lab. The space lab took 20 years to make and is worth over one billion dollars. The trip to the space station will take 14 days.

Fast Facts

1. The odds of good weather are around 80% for the launch
2. Seven astronauts will be on the shuttle
3. There are 400 expected Japanese people at the launch

The Japanese space lab weighs 32,000 pounds and is 37 feet long, filling Discovery's entire payload bay. This space lab is named Kibo, meaning hope, and will be the biggest room in the space station. This lab was split up into three sections. The first section was flown up in March 2008, with the second section flying up on May 31, 2008.

The Russian toilet pump is one and a half feet long and hardly takes up any of the available room in the crew cabin. The pump is supposed to fix one of the toilets in the space station that requires manual flushing, along with additional water to flush properly every couple of days.