The first European space base by Tatiana Hadarova

Yesterday, after a struggling day-long affair was finally installed first European laboratory Columbus on the International Space Station. Columbus is the first permanent research facility in space, which "belongs" to Europe. New space lab was ferried-up to the station by shuttle Atlantis and astronauts Melvin and Tani used a robot arm to slip the "cargo" on to a station port. Astronauts said that its installation took more time than expected. Columbus is a 1.9 billion investment of 10 European countries. It is 23 feet long, 15 feet in diameter and weighting about 14 tons. The lab was supposed to be delivered to the station 6 years ago, in 2002 to commemorate the anniversary of the sailing of Christopher Columbus, but because the problems with launching the space station's service module and the explosion of the shuttle Columbia in 2003 it was postponed. Even after six years, Columbus' installation was not without any problem. NASA had to delay it by a day because of the last-minute switch in crew, caused by German astronaut Hans Schlegel illness. French astronaut Leopold Eyharts said recently, that they hope to that this first participation will help in reinforcing their technical expertise and out experience of operations to be able to go further and participate with the future of space exploration. With Columbus, the International Space Station has now 8 rooms and will be expanded by another one, Japan's new lab named Kibo, which will be installed in March.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080211/sc_nm/space_shuttle_dc_4;_ylt=A0geu046b7FHaVABpAAAAAAA

by Tatiana Hadarova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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