NASA and ESA prepare Columbus for flight

A press release from the European Space Agency reports that NASA plans to resume testing and integration work on the ESA Columbus Space Laboratory to prepare it for connection with the International Space Station.

Columbus was flown to Florida back in May, 2006, to get in line for its launch to the station. Earlier this year, it was removed from temporary storage, and engineers equipped it with experiment racks and orbital hardware.

After a break over the summer, workers will continue preparing it for launch. If all goes well, it will blast into space atop the space shuttle Atlantis as early as December 6th, 2007 on the STS-122 Shuttle Flight.

Also aboard Columbus will be amateur radio equipment to support a linear transponder with an L-band uplink and
S-band downlink.

ESA information on the Columbus Space Laboratory can be found at:
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMJY2HYX3F_index_0.html.

Source: Amsat, ESA and Universe Today