The Discovery lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral on Monday and docked with the ISS at 12:20 a.m. Moscow time on Wednesday (21:20 GMT Tuesday).
"The shuttle and station crews opened hatches and greeted one another at 6:09 p.m. EDT [22:09 GMT Tuesday], beginning more than a week of joint operations between the two crews," NASA said on its official website.
The shuttle brought a crew of seven, including Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata, and delivered the space station's fourth and final set of solar panels. The solar array will provide the electricity to fully power scientific experiments and support the station's expanded crew when it is increased to six in May.
Wakata, the first long-duration Japanese resident of the ISS, replaced U.S. astronaut Sandra Magnus, who will return to Earth on Discovery after more than four months aboard the space station. The Japanese astronaut will return to Earth during the next station shuttle mission, STS-127, scheduled for June 2009.
The 13-day shuttle mission will feature three spacewalks to help install the S6 truss segment to the starboard, or right, side of the station and the deployment of its solar arrays. The flight also will replace a failed unit for a system that converts urine to potable water.
