Endeavour prepares to capture the Functional Cargo Block (FGB) using the shuttle's mechanical arm in this artist's depiction of the first Space Shuttle assembly flight for the International Space Station, mission STS-88 scheduled to launch in July 1998. The shuttle will carry the first U.S.-built component for the station, a connecting module called Node 1, and attach it to the already orbiting FGB, which supplies early electrical power and propulsion. The FGB will have been launched about two weeks earlier on a Russian Proton rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazahkstan. Once the FGB is captured using the mechanical arm, Astronaut Nancy Currie will maneuver the arm to dock the FGB to the conical mating adapter at the top of Node 1 in the shuttle's cargo bay. In ensuing days, three spacewalks will be performed to make power, data and utility connections between the two modules.
* Image and text credit - NASA
