New space station room is hooked up

A pair of spacewalking astronauts wired the International Space Station’s newest room, crossing the last major task off their to-do list before the next shuttle mission early next month.

Cmdr. Peggy Whitson and Daniel M. Tani hooked up more electrical and fluid connections linking the space station and the Harmony compartment that was delivered by the shuttle Discovery last month.

Harmony will serve as a docking port for a new European laboratory named Columbus. The shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to deliver the lab in two weeks. A Japanese lab set to be delivered early next year also will dock to the school bus-size module.

“It looks good so far,” Mission Control in Houston told the astronauts as they floated back into the hatch at the end of the spacewalk.