This story was updated at 5:33 a.m. EST.
HOUSTON — Astronauts will deliver
Europe's first manned space lab to the International Space Station (ISS) in a spacewalk today,
though with a different lineup than originally planned.
Atlantis shuttle astronauts Rex
Walheim and Stanley Love are due to step outside the station's Quest
airlock today at 9:35 a.m. EST (1435 GMT) to attach the European Space Agency's
(ESA) Columbus laboratory to its new orbital home.
ESA astronaut Hans Schlegel, of
Germany, was originally set to join Walheim on today's spacewalk, but mission
managers replaced
him with Love after an undisclosed medical issue arose among the shuttle
crew on Saturday. Schlegel will help Atlantis pilot Alan Poindexter choreograph
today's spacewalk from inside the shuttle.
"The only difference is who's going
out the hatch," said Mike Sarafin, lead shuttle
flight director for Atlantis' mission. None of the tasks for today's planned
6.5-hour spacewalk were modified because of the crew switch, he added.
Today's spacewalk is the first of
three planned excursions for Atlantis' 12-day
mission to the ISS. The outing will mark the third career spacewalk for
Walheim and the first for Love, who is also making his first spaceflight during
the shuttle flight.
"It's going to be really cool, but a
little bit scary too," Love has said of making his first spacewalk. "There's a
lot of interesting work to do."
Love is trained as a backup for
Schlegel's spacewalking tasks and was already assigned to the mission's third
excursion, mission managers said.
Columbus' orbital arrival
Packed with about three tons of
equipment and hardware, the
10-ton Columbus is the ESA's largest contribution to the ISS and the first
new science module to join the station since NASA's Destiny lab arrived in
2001.
The 1.4 billion euro ($2 billion)
lab's activation is the culmination of more than 20 years of development by the
ESA, and will be used for microgravity, astronomy and life science research.
"Columbus utilization now will be,
within a few days, a reality and not just a dream," ESA director-general
Jean-Jacques Dordain said after Atlantis launched the
new lab into space on Feb. 7.
Mission controllers in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany — just outside of Munich — will
watch over the 23-foot (7-meter) long module's science operations once
it is installed. The lab is about 14.7 feet (4.5 meters) wide and will add
about 2,648 cubic feet (75 cubic meters) of volume to the ISS.
"[This] is our basic spacewalk to
get Columbus ready to be attached to the space station," Walheim said in a NASA
interview. "It's always fun to see the new piece put on the station."
Walheim and Love will remove cables
and covers from Columbus and attach a grapple device that will allow their
crewmate Leland Melvin to latch onto the European lab using the space station's
robotic arm. The spacewalkers will also prepare an ISS cooling system nitrogen
tank for replacement.
It will be Melvin who will slowly
haul Columbus on a more than two-hour trip to its final perch on the right side
of the station's Harmony connecting node. If all goes well, the new lab should
be attached to the ISS by 4:25 p.m. EST (2135 GMT).
"I think everyone is going to be
holding their breath, waiting for this moment when Columbus gets attached to
the space station," Melvin said before flight.
Mission Control here at NASA's Johnson Space Center roused the Atlantis crew at 4:46
a.m. EST (0946 GMT) with the song "Fly Like an Eagle"
by Steve Miller, a tune chosen specifically for Melvin by his family.
"That was a great way to wake up
today on a day when we're going to install Columbus," Melvin told Mission
Control, thanking his family and sister Kathy
Clarke. "She lets me know that I can fly like an eagle, which we're doing
overhead right now, and it's going to be a beautiful day."
The first spacewalk of Atlantis'
STS-122 mission will begin at 9:35 a.m. EST (1435 GMT).
NASA is broadcasting Atlantis'
STS-122 mission live on NASA TV. Click
here for SPACE.com's shuttle mission coverage and NASA TV feed.
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