On this day in space: March 11, 2008: 1st Japanese Module & 'Dextre' Robot Launch to space station

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On March 11, 2008, the first piece of a Japanese module of the International Space Station launched on the space shuttle Endeavour during mission STS-123.

On March 11, 2008, the first piece of a Japanese module of the International Space Station launched on the space shuttle Endeavour during mission STS-123.

a winged spacecraft is seen approaching a space station with a module and robot in its open cargo bay

(Image credit: NASA)

Nicknamed Kibo, the Japanese Experiment Module is the largest single module on the entire space station. Its main component is about the size of a tour bus, so they couldn't launch the whole thing all at once. The remaining parts were launched later on STS-124 and STS-127. Along with the seven astronauts, STS-123 also carried a special Canadian robot to the space station.

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The Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator, also known as Dextre, is a huge two-armed robot that conducts repairs outside of the space station. This reduces the need for astronauts to take risky spacewalks to do the repairs themselves.

On This Day in Space: See our full 365-day video archive!

Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

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