Washington - US space shuttle Endeavour is set to launch on a mission to the International Space Station early Tuesday, carrying major additions to the station from both Japan and Canada. The first section of the Japanese-made Kibo laboratory and a robotic system of the Canadian Space Agency will be transported up by Endeavour's seven-member crew, set to lift off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 2:28 am (6:28 GMT) Tuesday.
Endeavour's 16-day mission will include five spacewalks, and its mission comes just two days after Europe's first ever unmanned space transporter was launched, carrying 6 tons of food, fuel and other supplies to the ISS.
The orbital cargo ship blasted off from the Kourou space centre in French Guiana early Sunday morning atop an Ariane 5 carrier rocket.
Space shuttle Atlantis only left the ISS last month. Its crew delivered and helped hook up the Columbus laboratory, Europe's largest contribution to the station.
Japan's Kibo - "hope" in Japanese -laboratory will perform about 100 experiments that could aid the development of medications and test new materials in the weightless environment. Japanese astronaut Takao Doi will be part of the Endeavour crew and help install the Kibo lab on the station.
Two other Japanese astronauts will fly with missions in May and December to complete construction of the Kibo laboratory.
With the addition of Kibo, Japan's Space Station Integration and Promotion Center north of Tokyo will join other control centers in the United States, Russia and Germany in monitoring components of the space station.
French astronaut Leopold Eyharts will return to Earth with Endeavour after a month on board the ISS to monitor the early assembly of the Columbus lab. US astronaut Garret Reisman will take his place.
