Story Continues BelowAs the two spacecraft sailed 215 miles above the Earth over the northern Atlantic Ocean, shuttle commander George Zamka delicately guided Endeavour through a precise corridor lining up the orbiter's docking adapter with its counterpart on the end of the space station's Harmony connecting node.

"Station and Houston, capture confirmed," Endeavour's pilot Terry Virts radioed to mission controllers in Houston and the Expedition 22 crew aboard ISS as the two vehicles made contact and latches engaged to join the spacecraft together.

After an hour and a half of leak checks to ensure an airtight seal between the shuttle and station, the hatches were opened and the crew of ISS, Expedition 22 commander Jeff Williams and flight engineers Oleg Kotov, Max Suraev, T.J. Creamer and Soichi Noguchi, welcomes the STS-130 astronauts on board ISS.

"We just wanted to take a moment to welcome the crew of STS-130 aboard the ISS," Williams said. "We're happy to see our friends. Some of us are really happy because we haven't seen many people other than the crew for a long time, and happy that we're coming close to the completion of assembly of station with this mission. So really happy to have you guys on board."

"Jeff, we are glad to be here," Zamka replied. "It was absolutely beautiful coming on up. We're ready to bring up Tranquility and cupola and work with you guys and bring it to life. This is a great day."

With Endeavour station-keeping 600 feet below ISS before docking, Zamka commanded Endeavour to pitch over on its back to expose the sensitive heat shield tiles on its belly to the space station where Williams and Kotov used 400-millimeter and 800-millimeter digital cameras to take high-resolution photos of the thermal protection system.

The photos will be used by a team of engineers in mission control who will look for signs of any damage that occurred during the shuttle's ride to orbit Monday morning. So far, however, nothing has been spotted on launch day photos or video that would indicate Endeavour suffered any potentially catastrophic damage that would require repairs before its scorching re-entry and return to Earth at the end of STS-130.

The only hiccup in today's rendezvous was the failure of the laser-ranging trajectory control system. The system provides range (distance) and range-rate (closing rate) information to the shuttle crew as they move into final approach before docking.

The automatic system started to provide erratic data as Endeavour flew within 200 feet of the station, forcing the crew to rely on a backup system consisting of a handheld laser range sensor. Mission control emphasized that use of the handheld system is perfectly acceptable and the docking operation was never threatened.

"We just relied more heavily on the hand-held laser and disregarded some of the noisy data that was coming from the trajectory control system," said lead Flight Director Kwatsi Alibaruho

Endeavour's docking sets the stage for the mission's first spacewalk Thursday when the new Tranquility module and cupola will be lifted out of the shuttle's payload bay and attached to the side of the Unity Node 1 module.

(The Spacearium / SpaceflightNews.net)