(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-12-10 08:56

With Columbus, Europe hopes to become an integral part of the only functioning orbital outpost, whose experiments with gravity are considered essential to prepare humans for long-term life and work in space, and journeys to Mars and beyond.

The Japanese laboratory Kibo, the fourth planned component of the ISS which is to be the largest and most sophisticated of all, is meant to be delivered in stages over subsequent shuttle flights.

The first of the Kibo flights is scheduled for around February 14, on the Endeavour shuttle, and a second is due in April on the Discovery craft. Other shuttle flights are scheduled for August and September.

Bill Gerstenmeyer, NASA's associate director for space operations, played down the impact of the lengthy Atlantis delay on next year's shuttle launches, some of the last before the fleet's scheduled retirement in 2010.

"We are all a little bit disappointed we did not to get to see a launch today," Gerstenmeyer told a news conference.

But he added: "If you look at what this means moving into January from the big-picture standpoint, it's not that big an impact to us overall, it won't impact the next mission, the February flight."

Initially it was planned that Columbus would be flown to the ISS at the end of 2004.

But the tragic end of the shuttle Columbia in February 2003 grounded the three remaining shuttle orbiters for two years, which in turn delayed the laboratory's launch.

Columbus will be controlled from the German Aerospace Center in Oberpfaffenhofen, close to Munich. In all, 10 European countries are participating in the program with Germany by far the biggest contributor.

The laboratory will allow astronauts to conduct hundreds of experiments a year, notably in areas of biotechnology, medicine, materials and fluids.

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