The astronauts used backup systems, including star trackers and hand-held lasers, to navigate to the station due to the loss of the shuttle's primary Ku-band communications system, which took out the ship's radars, television and main data relay.
Space shuttle Discovery arrived at the International Space Station on Wednesday for one of Nasa's last servicing and resupply runs before the fleet is retired later this year.
Discovery commander Alan Poindexter and his six crewmates, including Japan's rookie astronaut Naoko Yamazaki, reached the orbital space base at 3.44am EDT (0744 GMT) as the ships sailed 215 miles (346km) above the Caribbean Sea.
The astronauts used backup systems, including star trackers and hand-held lasers, to navigate to the station due to the loss of the shuttle's primary Ku-band communications system, which took out the ship's radars, television and main data relay.
One of the crew's first tasks will be to borrow the space station's communications lines to radio videotapes of their heat shield inspection on Tuesday to Mission Control center in Houston for analysis.
The inspection is part of the upgraded safety procedures implemented after the 2003 Columbia disaster, which killed seven astronauts. The shuttle broke apart during its return to Earth due to an undetected hole in its heat shield.
Before parking at the station, Poindexter slowly back-flipped the shuttle so astronauts aboard the station could photograph Discovery's belly, which was not part of Tuesday's inspection. The images will be sent to ground control teams for analysis as well.
The loss of the shuttle's main communications system is not expected to adversely impact Discovery's mission, though flight directors have had to revamp some procedures, said LeRoy Cain, head of Nasa's mission management team.
The shuttle is carrying an Italian-built cargo pod filled with 17,000 pounds (7,700kg) of equipment and supplies for the station. Nasa plans three more missions to the outpost before it retires Discovery and sister ships Atlantis and Endeavour due to cost and safety issues.
The Obama administration wants to cancel a planned follow-on program to send astronauts back to the moon, saying the $108 billion project, known as Constellation, was too expensive and lacked cache.
The president plans to hold a space summit at or near the Kennedy Space Center on April 15 to build support for a revamped space exploration initiative that initially will be focused on technology developments needed to send people to Mars.
The new plan also extends the life of the space station, a $100 billion project of 16 nations that has been under construction since 1998, to at least 2020.
The six-member station crew is led by Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, and includes Japan's Soichi Noguchi.
The shuttle, which is scheduled to spend nine days at the station, is due back at the Kennedy Space Center on April 18.
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