The space shuttle Atlantis has linked up with the International Space Station for the final rendezvous of its 25-year career.
NASA said Atlantis and its crew of six astronauts successfully docked with the orbiting space lab at 3.28pm Irish time about 220 miles (350km) above the south Pacific.
Its arrival was not without drama as a piece of debris threatened to force Mission Control to order the space station to perform an emergency manoeuvre to avoid a collision.
As things turned out the unidentified piece of space debris passed by safely some five miles away from the docking procedure and no special operation was required.
After an hour spent checking the soundness of the seal, the shuttle and station crews opened the hatches and held a traditional welcome ceremony before beginning preparations for the first of three planned spacewalks on Tuesday.
The mission is the 32nd and final scheduled voyage for Atlantis, which first launched in 1985 and has logged some 115 million miles over a career spanning a quarter of a century.
Only two more shuttle launches remain - one in September for Discovery and the final blast off for Endeavour in November - before the curtain falls on this era of human spaceflight.
The United States will then rely on Russia to take astronauts to the station aboard three-seater Soyuz spacecraft until a new fleet of commercial space taxis is operational.
During a mission of almost 13 days, most of which will be spent moored to the ISS, Atlantis and the crew will unload more than 12 tonnes of equipment, including power storage batteries, a communications antenna and a radiator.
The biggest single element is the five-ton Rassver research module, or MRM-1, which will provide additional storage space and a new docking port for Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft.
