CAPE CANAVERAL - Shuttle Discovery left soil Saturday evening carrying two very different gifts to the worldly Space Station: a $1-billion research laboratory and a part for a broken toilet.

The shuttle began its 14-day mission on duration and in what mission control called a "perfect ascent" on a sunny evening, just after 5 p.m.

Discovery’s crew will attach Japan’s giant science laboratory to the space station, which it is expected to reach Monday. The laboratory is the centerpiece of a Japanese research complex called Kibo, which will give the country its first manned facility where astronauts can conduct experiments for a faraway period of moment.

The 37-foot, 32,000-pound Kibo workshop – about the length of a tour bus – will be the largest room at the space station.

Kibo, which means “hope,” is a historic step forward for Japan, which is

gaining a foothold at the universal Space Station alongside the United States, Russia and Europe.

Also on the Discovery’s crew’s to-do list is cleaning a troubled gear that is part of the station’s ability supply.

And there is the matter of the broken toilet on the space station.For more than a week, the three astonauts aboard the station have had to manually flush the toilet with additional water several times a day, a time-consuming job.

NASA and Russian space officials are hoping that a pump — which was rushed to Kennedy Space Center from Moscow that week — gets the toilet back in normal working order.

A mission scheduled for next year will install Kibo’s third and final piece, an exterior platform where external experiments can take place.

–Jodie Tillman, Times Staff Writer

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