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Shuttle Launches To Deliver European Space Agency Lab to Station

With the February 7 afternoon launch of Atlantis through cloud-swept skies above Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) most important contribution to the International Space Station -- its Columbus laboratory – is finally on its way to the orbital outpost.

The Columbus launch and commissioning originally were scheduled for 2002 but were delayed in the late 1990s by funding problems for the Russian Zvezda service module -- which supplied the station’s early living quarters, life support systems and propulsion -- and again in 2003 by the tragic Columbia accident that killed all seven crew members as the shuttle exploded on re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere.

Another ESA contribution to the space station, a sophisticated automated transfer vehicle named Jules Verne that can carry up to six metric tons of useable cargo to the station, is scheduled to launch from ESA’s spaceport in French Guiana March 7 and stay in orbit until August 9. Both spacecraft have been in development since 1996.

“From the crew,” shuttle Commander Stephen Frick said a few minutes before launch, “we know the Columbus module has been many years in the making and we’re looking forward to doing our part to bring it up to Peggy Whitson and her crew on the International Space Station and start its good work and many, many years of science.”

Over many months, said Alan Thirkettle, ESA International Space Station program manager, during a February 6 briefing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, “we’ll be launching 45 or 47 tons to the space station. It’s a huge amount of hardware to launch after 10 or 12 years of development, and an awful lot of people in Europe are very proud to be part of that.”

With the installation of Columbus, he added, ESA “will own a part of the station. We’ll have the right to have our astronauts flying on [the station] to perform the iterative science that they do so well and to be icons for the youth of the future in Europe.”

Ten European nations are participating in the ESA International Space Station project: Germany, France and Italy are the major partners; the other countries are Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

COLUMBUS

Columbus is a 7-meter-long, 4-meter-diameter cylinder that contains 16 racks: three are used for systems, three for stowage and 11 for payloads. The lab is launching with five internal payloads and two of an eventual four external payloads.

The initial internal payloads include a biological laboratory, a physiology lab, a European drawer rack that accommodates several science experiments, and a rack that holds hardware that outfits the first four racks.

The external payloads are SOLAR, an observatory to monitor the sun, and the European Technology Exposure Facility, whose eight experiments require exposure to the space environment.

 
European Space Agency image shows a computer-drawn interior view of the Columbus module. (© AP Images)“We will be getting science back from the Columbus laboratory within a week or 10 days of its launching,” Thirkettle said, “and that’s something we’re very excited and pleased about.”

ESA has a real-time distributed ground system of nine support operations centers throughout Europe -- from Scandinavia to southern Italy and points east and west -- where scientists will work and communicate with their on-orbit experiments via the new Columbus Control Centre in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany.

“During the next two months to come,” Thirkettle added, “we will check out the systems and check out the interfaces with the station. But what we are really going to check out is the ability of the scientists to operate their experiments with the help of the astronauts on Columbus and make sure they get their data down.”

ATLANTIS AND ENDEAVOUR

U.S. Navy Commander Stephen Frick is leading the STS-122 shuttle mission and Navy Commander Alan Poindexter is the pilot. Mission specialists include U.S. Air Force Colonel Rex Walheim, Stanley Love, Leland Melvin and ESA astronaut Hans Schlegel.

Schlegel was most recently in space as a mission specialist on STS-55 in 1993, when Columbia carried to orbit the second reusable German Spacelab and demonstrated the ability of space exploration to promote international cooperation and scientific research in space.

Atlantis also will deliver ESA astronaut Léopold Eyharts to the complex to become part of Expedition 16 and oversee the installation, activation and in-orbit commissioning of Columbus and its experiment facilities. He will be the first European astronaut to test and operate the Columbus lab’s systems in orbit.

Expedition 16 flight engineer Daniel Tani will return to Earth with the STS-122 crew after nearly two months on the station.

The 11-day mission includes three spacewalks. During the first, Walheim and Schlegel will install Columbus. The next day, astronauts will enter the ESA module for the first time, expanding the station’s research facilities and giving crew members and scientists on Earth the ability to conduct life, physical and materials science experiments. On another spacewalk, astronauts Walheim and Love will install Columbus’ two external payloads.

Endeavours STS-123 mission, scheduled for launch March 11, will deliver Kibo, the first section of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agencys laboratory module, and Dextre, Canadas new robotics system to the space station.