The STS-123 crew members have completed their first full day in space. NASA announced that the STS-123 crew completed today’s scheduled inspections of space shuttle Endeavour’s heat shield and  prepared for their arrival at the International Space Station tonight at 11:25 p.m. EDT.

Commander Dominic Gorie, Pilot Gregory Johnson and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's, Takao Doi used the shuttle’s robotic arm and its OBSS for the standard survey of Endeavour’s heat-resistant reinforced carbon-carbon and heat shield tiles.

They checked the spacecraft’s underside, nose cap and leading edges of the wings as well as hard to reach shuttle surfaces.
The purpose of this inspection, which started at 8:00 p.m., was to ensure that, during the vehicle’s climb to orbit, no damage occurred to the tiles that protect Endeavour from the heat of reentry.
Over the next few days, engineers and flight controllers will analyze the data collected by the STS-123 crew.

Endeavour’s crew also is slated to extend the Orbiter Docking System Ring at 5:08 a.m. Wednesday. They will also check out tools the astronauts will use to rendezvous and link up with the station. Docking is set for 11:25 p.m. Wednesday.

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.

Behnken, Linnehan and Reisman are checking out spacesuits they will use during the mission’s five scheduled spacewalks at 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.

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 the astronauts will arrive at the International Space Station, 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.