The space shuttle Endeavour is almost ready to dock with the International Space Station. There were some concerns about the damage inflicted on its heat shields at the time of the launch from the Kennedy Space Center.

The seven members of shuttle Endeavour’s crew, Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Eric Boe and mission specialists Don Pettit, Steve Bowen, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, Shane Kimbrough and Sandra Magnus, were awakened at 9:25 a.m. EST for rendezvous and docking day. The wakeup music was “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones.

The seven members of the crew carefully inspected all the details in order to make sure that everything is set for the mission’s next phase. Eric Boe, Shane Kimbrough and Don Pettit used an extra-long inspection boom with a camera and sensors on its tip and scanned with great attention the shuttle's reinforced carbon-carbon wing edges and nose cap - procedure described as mandatory ever since the loss of shuttle Columbia in 2003.

"There's no apparent damage there in the imagery that we gathered," said Mike Sarafin, the mission's lead flight director. "Our analysts are off assessing it."

One of the crew’s top priorities, which is expected to be taken care of tomorrow, is to transfer on the ISS a cargo module with more than 15,000 pounds of gear. The transport includes a toilet, new sleep stations, a new recycling system and several other add-ons meant to make sure that the station will be able to accomodate a 6 person personel, instead of its current 3 person limit.

NASA’s engineers identified only two minor problems on Endeavour: a malfunctioning heater on a fuel line, which was shut down, and a misbehaving communications system antenna.

LeRoy Cain, a senior shuttle program manager, explained that so far, "the mission is going extremely well," and for now, they have every reason to believe that their future actions will also be successful.

The upgrades to the space station's living space should enable it to house more residents on longer-term assignments after the retirement in 2010 of the US fleet of aging reusable orbiters.

The 15-day mission will include four spacewalks to repair joints that allow the station's solar panels to rotate toward the sun. Astronauts will also install a nitrogen tank, a global positioning system and a camera outside the ISS

Endeavour astronaut Sandra Magnus will stay behind as a member of the ISS crew while Greg Chamitoff will return to Earth with the rest of the crew after more than five months in space.