After a great launch, space shuttle Endeavour thundered into orbit early Tuesday morning carrying seven astronauts, Japan's Kibo and Canada’s Dexter to ISS. "This is a great launch and a real tribute to the team to get it ready to go fly," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for Space Operations.

Thrust in the form of translucent blue and bright yellow fire ignited a light show over NASA's Kennedy Space Center when Endeavour roared off the launch pad at 2:28 a.m. EDT on March 11.

The STS-123 mission started with a rare night launch for Endeavour's crew, commanded by veteran astronaut Dominic Gorie. Gregory H. Johnson served as Pilot.

"The vehicule is in great shape, the weather is go ... so on the behalf of the Kennedy Space Center launch team I wish you good luck, godspeed, see you back in 16 days," launch director Mike Leinback told the shuttle crew as he gave the green light for liftoff.

"Well Mike, you've just made people smile around the world and you've got seven smiling faces on board here," commander Dominic Gorie replied from the shuttle's cockpit. "We'd like to give a special thanks to our families, KSC's Endeavour crew, our friends in Houston and Canada and for JAXA, we'd like to say konichwa, doomo arigatoo and banzai! God has truly blessed us with a beautiful night ... to launch. So let's light 'em up and give 'em a show."

STS-123 has five planned spacewalks and its crew includes mission Specialists Rick Linnehan, Robert Behnken, Mike Foreman and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Takao Doi.

The day after Endeavour’s launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Gorie, Johnsonand Doi will use the shuttle’s robotic arm and its OBSS for the standard survey of Endeavour’s heat-resistant reinforced carbon-carbon and heat shield tiles. Behnken, Linnehan and Reisman will check out the spacesuits on Endeavour.

Endeavour is scheduled to dock with ISS on the third flight day. Once Endeavour reaches a point about 600 feet below the station, Gorie will fly it in a back flip, so station crew members can photograph its heat shield. The digital images will be sent to the ground for analysis. Gorie then will fly Endeavour to a point ahead of the station and maneuver it to a docking with Pressurized Mating Adapter No 2, at the forward end of the Harmony node.

Johnson and Behnken will use the station’s Canadarm2 to remove the pallet containing Dextre from the payload bay and attach i to a fixture on the station’s main truss. A review of procedures for the first spacewalk will wind up the Endeavour crew’s working day. Flight day 4 focuses on the first spacewalk, by Linnehan and Reisman. Foreman will serve as intravehicular officer, while Behnken and Eyharts will operate the station’s Canadarm2. Tasks include preparation for the ELM‐PS installation and work on Dextre assembly. Doi and Gorie will subsequently install the ELM‐PS on Harmony with the shuttle arm.

Expedition 16 Flight Engineer Leopold Eyharts, who arrived at the station aboard Atlantis in February, will return to Earth with the Endeavour crew as Reisman takes his place on the station.

During the first three spacewalks, the astronauts will install the first pressurized section, Japanese Experiment Logistics Module (ELM-PS), of the future Kibo (Hope) Japanese module and the Canadian Space Agency’s newest contribution to the station, the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator or Dextre.

Kibo (pronounced key-boh means “hope”) is Japan’s first human-rated space facility. Kibo will be the largest experiment module on the space station, accommodating 31 racks in its pressurized section, including experiment, stowage, and system racks. Kibo is equipped with external facilities that can accommodate 10 exposed experiment payloads.

Kibo is a complex facility that enables several kinds of specialized functions. In total, Kibo consists of: Pressurized Module (PM) and Exposed Facility (EF), a logistics module attached to both the PM and EF and a Remote Manipulator System– Japanese Experiment Module Remote Manipulator System (JEMRMS.)

To make maximum use of its limited space, Kibo possesses every function required to perform experiment activities in space: the pressurized and exposed sections, a scientific airlock in the PM, and a remote manipulator system that enables operation of exposed experiments without the assistance of a spacewalking crew.

The Kibo elements will be delivered to the space station by three space shuttle flights. STS-123 will deliver the ELM-PS, STS-124 will deliver the PM and JEMRMS, and STS-127 will deliver the EF and the Experiment Logistics Module–Exposed Section (ELM-ES).

Dextre is the third and final component of the Mobile Servicing System developed by Canada for the ISS. With advanced stabilization and handling capabilities, Dextre can perform delicate human-scale tasks such as removing and replacing small exterior components. Operated by crew members inside the station or by flight controllers on the ground, it also is equipped with lights, video equipment, a stowage platform, and three robotic tools. The pressurized logistics module for the Kibo complex represents the first manned spacecraft for Japan.

"With this flight, I believe we fully became a real partner in the International Space Station project," said Keiji Tachikawa, president of JAXA, the Japanese space agency.

The fourth spacewalk will be used to replace a remote power control module and test a shuttle tile repair material. The repair material test was originally scheduled for Discovery’s mission last October, but was rescheduled so that problems with the station’s solar arrays could be addressed.

The goal is to complete this test before space shuttle Atlantis flies to the Hubble Space Telescope in August. Unlike missions to the space station, Atlantis’ crew members wouldn’t be able to wait on the station for another shuttle to bring them home if Atlantis was damaged.

On the fifth spacewalk, mission specialists Robert L. Behnken and Mike Foreman will store on the station the boom that attaches to the shuttle’s robotic arm for heat shield inspections. The boom is being stored on orbit since the next shuttle will not have enough room to carry both the boom and the larger JAXA module in the cargo bay.

After this mission NASA plans another ten, including four more in 2008, to complete construction of the ISS by September 30, 2010, when NASA's three-shuttle fleet is to be retired.