(Adds fly-by, heat shield inspection, paragraphs 5-6, 16) By Irene Klotz HOUSTON, June 11 (Reuters) - The U.S. space shuttle Discovery backed away from the International Space Station on Wednesday, leaving behind a Japanese research laboratory, a new crew member and high hopes for the outpost's completion by 2010. Pilot Ken Ham pulsed Discovery's steering jets to slip away from the station's Harmony docking port at 7:42 a.m. EDT (1142 GMT) as the two space ships sailed 210 miles (340 km) above the southern Pacific Ocean east of Australia. The shuttle arrived at the station on June 2 to deliver Japan's primary contribution to the $100-billion, multinational complex -- the 37-foot-long (11-metre-long) lab called Kibo. "We hope we left them a better, more capable station than when we arrived," Discovery commander Mark Kelly radioed to flight controllers as the shuttle prepared for undocking. Ham steered the shuttle around the station so the crew could admire and photograph the complex, which is now more than 70 percent complete. As the ship's jets were fired to leave orbit, returning flight engineer Garrett Reisman volunteered his remaining stash of candy bars to the station crew. Greg Chamitoff, who replaced Reisman on the station, replied: "We found those last night and broke into them, thanks." Discovery is due to land at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday to complete the third of five shuttle missions NASA has planned for this year. The U.S. space agency's next flight is scheduled for October when shuttle Atlantis lifts off for a final servicing call to the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA has 10 missions remaining before the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010 and work begins on a new ship that can travel to the moon as well as the space station. FIXING THE STATION In addition to delivering Kibo, the Discovery crew brought parts to fix the station's sole toilet, the first bagels in space and supplies for station commander Sergei Volkov, flight engineer Oleg Kononenko and Chamitoff. Chamitoff's family owns a bagel shop in Montreal and he brought the bagels as a treat for his crewmates. During a final round of interviews on Tuesday before taking Reisman's place on the space station, Chamitoff said: "This is a handover between one Jewish astronaut and another so we're pretty excited about that." Shuttle astronauts Michael Fossum and Ronald Garan conducted three spacewalks during the mission to install and outfit Kibo, inspect joints that rotate the station's solar power wings and recharge its cooling system. NASA wants to get the station in top shape before the shuttle program ends. Russian Soyuz capsules will be used to ferry crew members to and from the outpost and a variety of vehicles from Russia, Europe and eventually Japan will haul cargo. But no other ships besides the shuttle can return equipment and heavy payloads to Earth. After leaving the station, the Discovery crew used a laser-tipped inspection boom to check the shuttle's wings and nose cap for damage that might have been caused by debris during the ship's launch on May 31. Typically the inspection, which has become a routine part of all flights since the shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere in 2003, is conducted the day after liftoff. But the Kibo lab was too large for Discovery to also carry the 50-foot (15-metre) boom in its payload bay. During the first spacewalk, the astronauts retrieved a boom left behind by the crew of the last shuttle mission. (Editing by Michael Christie and John O'Callaghan)
A protester holds a picture of Mikhail Khodorkovsky of Russia during a demonstration in Moscow May 31, 2008, marking the third anniversary of the date when Khodorkovsky was sentenced. The former ...
