Live In Orbit: Astronauts Snare Carrier

Two astronauts operating the International Space Station's robotic latched onto an Italian moving van in the cargo bay of shuttle Endeavour and soon will be lifting it to a berthing port on the U.S. side of the outpost.

Endeavour mission specialists Shane Kimbrough and Don Pettit are performing the construction crane-work from inside the station's U.S. Destiny laboratory.

The 57.5-foot-long arm will gently hoist the cylindrical module -- dubbed Leonardo -- from a shuttle cargo bay cradle and the mount it to the Earth-facing port on the U.S. Harmony module.

The Harmony module, launched in October 2007 aboard shuttle Discovery, serves as a pressurized passageway between the U.S. side of the station and both the European Columbus laboratory and the Japanese Kibo research facility.

Named for the famed Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci, the Leonardo carrier is one of three Multipurpose Logistics Modules built by the Italian Space Agency for NASA as part of that nation's contribution to the 15-nation station project.

More than 14,000 pounds of equipment and supplies were hauled up to the station in the carrier, including new sleep stations, a new toilet and a new kitchen gantry -- gear needed to expand the size of resident crews to six from three next spring.

You can watch the lift live here in The Flame Trench. Simply click the NASA TV box on the right hand side of this page to launch our NASA TV viewer and round-the-clock coverage of STS-126.

Launched Friday evening from Kennedy Space Center, Endeavour and its crew docked Sunday at the station and will remain there until Thanksgiving.

In addition to all the inside work, the astronauts plan four spacewalks outside the station to fix a faulty solar wing rotary mechanism on the starboard side of the outpost's central truss.

The shuttle and its crew are scheduled to land at KSC around 2:10 p.m. Nov. 29.