Ceremony for the completion of the Columbus laboratory

Image above: German Chancellor Angela Merkel (in red), NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale, members of the ESA's Astronaut Corps, ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain (far right) and Evert Dudok (President of EADS SPACE Transportation). Photo credit: EADS/dpa

NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale joined German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European astronauts and other dignitaries in Bremen, Germany, to mark the completion of the European Space Agency's International Space Station Columbus module.

Later this month, the Columbus laboratory will be shipped to NASA's Kennedy Space Center, where it will be prepared for its launch to the space station on the space shuttle.

Columbus will provide state-of-the-art internal payload accommodation for experiments in material science, fluid physics and life science, and its external payload facility will host experiments and applications in the field of space science, Earth observation and technology

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