Description

STS 122 is an American shuttle craft that was launched from Cape Canaveral at 19:45 UT on 07 February 2008. It carried seven astronauts (five American and two European) to the International Space Station (ISS). The primary goal of the mission was to carry the European (ESA) laboratory, Columbus, to the ISS and install it. It docked with the ISS at 17:25 UT on 09 February. The Columbus laboratory is 6.8 m long, with a diameter of 4.5 m, volume of 75 3 and mass of 12.8 tonnes, and contains four ESA science instruments racks and one storage rack. Later, NASA will add five more racks. The laboratory was connected to the Harmony module (that was installed during the STS 120 mission) of the ISS, and is expected to be used for microgravity science projects. The crew did three spacewalks to install and checkout the connections. They also installed on Columbus a European solar monitor named SOLAR, and a facility named EuTEF (European Technology Exposure Facility). The shuttle undocked from the ISS at 09:28 UT on 18 February, and landed back at Cape Canaveral at 14:08 UT on 20 February.