CAPE
CANAVERAL, Fla. – Seven astronauts and NASA's shuttle Atlantis are poised to
rocket into space today to carry a European laboratory to its new orbital home
at International Space Station (ISS).
Shuttle
commander Stephen Frick and six crewmates plan to make an an afternoon launch
from their seaside pad here at the Kennedy Space Center to haul the European
Space Agency's (ESA) Columbus lab to the ISS.
"Obviously
it's been a real long training flow for us, a long time building to this
moment," Frick told reporters earlier this week. "We're absolutely ready to go."
Atlantis'
STS-122 crew is counting down toward a planned 4:31 p.m. EST (2131 GMT) liftoff,
with current forecasts predicting a 90 percent chance of clear skies over
Atlantis' Pad 39 launch site.
Launching
spaceward with Frick will be shuttle pilot Alan Poindexter; mission specialists
Leland Melvin, Rex Walheim, Stanley Love and ESA astronauts Hans Schlegel and
Leopold Eyharts. Poindexter, Melvin and Love will begin their first career spaceflights
when Atlantis lifts off.
"I'm trying
to suppress it a little bit before the engines light up," Melvin said in a NASA
interview. "But it's very exciting."
Frick and
his crewmates plan
to install Columbus, swap out one member of the station's Expedition 16
crew and attach new experiments and hardware outside the ISS during the three
spacewalks planned for their 11-day mission. If Atlantis' power supplies hold
out, the STS-122 flight could be extended by two more days to allow an extra
spacewalk to inspect a balky station solar array joint.
Europe's orbital lab
For ESA
officials, today's planned launch is the culmination of more than 20 years of
effort to build and fly the 1.4 billion Euro ($2 billion) Columbus
laboratory. The 13-ton research module will be attached to the station's hub-like
Harmony node during the STS-122 mission.
"It's very
important for us to get the module on orbit and to have, then, the opportunity
for our astronauts to fly," said Alan Thirkettle, space station program manager
for the ESA. "We're very excited, we're very proud and we're really looking
forward to it."
Eyharts and
Schlegel will christen Columbus for the ESA during STS-122, with Eyharts
staying aboard the ISS as the agency's first long-duration astronaut to live
and work inside the new laboratory. The veteran
French astronaut will replace U.S. spaceflyer Dan Tani, an Expedition 16
flight engineer who will return to Earth aboard Atlantis when it lands on Dec.
17.
"This is a
really great time," Eyharts said in an interview. "We are starting now to have
the international partner modules."
Atlantis'
STS-122 mission will mark NASA's fourth shuttle flight of the year and the
second to haul a new orbital room to the ISS.
NASA must
launch Atlantis by Dec. 13 in order to deliver Columbus to the ISS before the
angles between the station's power-generating solar arrays and the sun become
unfavorable to support docked operations. If the shuttle cannot launch by the
window's close, NASA would likely wait until Jan. 2 to make another attempt,
mission managers have said.
"We only
have a week of launch window, so we're really excited to launch on the first
try," Frick said.
NASA
will broadcast Atlantis' STS-122 mission live on NASA TV beginning at 11:30
a.m. EST (1630 GMT). Click here
for SPACE.com's shuttle mission coverage and NASA TV feed.
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