Mission

At 5:25 a.m., the Kibo's Pressurized Module (PM) was activated with B-string power (B-string activation) which provides initial environmental conditions inside the PM.
The hatch-opening took place at 6:05 a.m. and the first crew-ingress at 6:09 a.m.

The crew also completed the other to-do tasks for FD5 including the repair work for the toilet in Russian service module, the checkout of the Orbiter Boom Sensor System (OBSS), and preparation of the mission's second spacewalk.
The toilet in question seems functioning well after replacing its separator pump with a new one.

The PM tasks details

Hoshide and Nyberg performed the PM/Harmony vestibule outfitting, connecting power cables for routing electricity to the PM.
After that, the PM was powered up with the command sent from the NASA Mission Control Center in Houston. This allowed the JEM Control Processor (JCP) to transfer data between Kibo and the ground. The first command from the TKSC was sent to Kibo at 4:51 a.m. today. The TKSC took over the rest of the PM activation procedures and completed the PM B-string activation.

The TKSC (Tsukuba Space Center) in Japan will activate the A-string systems tomorrow (FD6), and then, Kibo will be fully operational with the designed redundancy.

Hoshide's activities on FD5

Hoshide and Nyberg performed outfitting of the PM/Harmony vestibule in preparation for the PM activation and entry.

After the PM's B-string activation was completed by the TKSC, they continued with the further outfitting of the PM/Harmony vestibule. Hoshide and Nyberg opened the PM hatch at 6:05 a.m. and floated into the PM donning their goggles and masks to check out the module's inside. The other crewmembers followed and entered the module one after another.

Just before the ingress, Hoshide sent his thanks and message to the ground, saying that

"Houston and Tsukuba. This is station from in front of JPM in Node 2. This is the great moment for the Japanese folks. We have JPM, the Kibo module, installed yesterday. And now we have the hatch to be opened. And I just would like to thank all the folks, all the Japanese folks that's been working very very hard. I know it's been like 20 plus years to get this module up in space. It's a beautiful module, and we have a new hope on the space station. Looking into through the window here, we have not been in yet, but lights are on inside and we can look inside. And it looks pretty empty because we do not have a lot of racks inside. But one engineer said down on earth that it looks really empty but it's full of dreams. I really think that what it is."

And he hanged "noren" above the hatch of the PM. Noren is sort-of a door curtain made of cloth.

For more information, please log on to NASA STS-124 Status Report.

*All times are Japan Standard Time (JST)