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Europe hopes finally to get its space station laboratory, Columbus, into orbit this Thursday.The module will be taken up inside the shuttle Atlantis when it launches from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.Columbus is intended to be the focal point of Europe's space station activities, which have so far cost five billion euros.Once the module is in place, astronauts will begin an intensive programme of research in weightless surroundings.The scientific studies will impact diverse fields, from crop breeding to the development of advanced alloys.The experiments will also help researchers better understand the physiological demands of long-duration spaceflight, something that will be important if humans are ever to colonise the Moon or travel to Mars."Columbus means so much to Europe," said Alan Thirkettle, the European Space Agency's (Esa) space station programme manager."It means finally we will have our own real estate on-orbit - a multipurpose research laboratory that gives us the opportunity to do the world-class science we've been looking forward to for such a long time," he told BBC News.The scheduled launch time on Thursday is 1445 EST (1945 GMT).Plant exchange
Columbus should have flown in December but the 1.3bn euro ($1.8bn; £0.9bn) lab was held on the ground while the US space agency (Nasa) got to grips with a faulty fuel sensor system in the shuttle.In a number of recent launch attempts, the engine cut-off, or Eco, sensors have sporadically given out readings indicating orbiter fuel tanks are dry even when they have just been topped off with propellant.Mission managers decided the issue had to be resolved before Atlantis could lift off; and engineers were ordered to strip back the system and fix what were believed to be poor electrical connections in the relay taking data from the sensors to the shuttle's computers.The two-month delay has had no impact on Columbus itself. The module, stored in Atlantis' cargo bay, has been closed up since October. However, biological samples (Arabidopsis plants) intended for use in some of the first experiments have had to be exchanged for fresh supplies. These specimens, though, are taken up in the mid-deck of the orbiter and are easily changed over.Columbus will be installed on Day Four of the 11-day shuttle mission.The 7m-long (24ft), 4.5m-wide (14ft), 12.8-tonne laboratory will be manoeuvred into position by the shuttle's robotic arm, and docked to the station's Harmony Node 2 connector.Hans Schlegel, the German Esa astronaut on the flight, will play a key role in this process, carrying out two spacewalks to get the job done.
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