Columbus crew completed
14 February 2007
Construction of the International Space Station (ISS) is taking place at a rapid pace. One of the key pieces of European hardware to be added later this year is the Columbus laboratory. A crew of seven – two ESA astronauts and five NASA colleagues – will deliver the science module to the Station. The final member of the STS-122 Shuttle crew, ESA astronaut Léopold Eyharts of France, was named on 13 February. He joins Hans Schlegel of Germany, who was assigned to the mission last July.
The ESA duo will play a major role in attaching Columbus to the ISS. Schegel will then return to Earth in the Shuttle 14 days after launch. Eyharts will remain on the Station to oversee activation and final check-out of the module. As flight engineer, he will become the first astronaut to test and operate in orbit the systems and science equipment of the Columbus laboratory. He will come back with the next Shuttle crew (STS-123) after a stay of about two months.
Columbus will be transported to the Station in the Shuttle’s cargo bay. It will then be mated to the European-built docking port (Node 2) using the ISS robotic arm. The laboratory will already be fitted out with some scientific and storage equipment. Two more experiments will be attached to the outside of Columbus during a spacewalk.
A former test pilot, Eyharts was selected to be an astronaut by the French space agency (CNES) in 1990. This will be his second space mission.
