The STS-122 mission concluded yesterday, when the space shuttle Atlantis landed at Kennedy Space Center after spending 13 days in space.

During this period, the crew of STS-122 installed the European laboratory Columbus and performed several maintenance tasks.

Yesterday, Atlantis brought home Commander Steve Frick, Pilot Alan Poindexter and Mission Specialists Leland Melvin, Rex Walheim, Stanley Love, Dan Tani and European Space Agency astronaut Hans Schlegel. Dan Tani had been living in space and aboard the International Space Station for 120 days by the time Atlantis landed. European Space Agency astronaut Leopold Eyharts launched aboard Atlantis and took Tani's place on the station.

NASA officials said the mission was flawless. "This was just an unbelievably super mission for us," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for space operations. "I can't think of a better way to start this year out than with this great flight."

Two weeks in space did not feel like a long time, the crew said, because there were plenty of tasks to take care of. "It doesn't feel like about two weeks ago that we launched," Poindexter said.

The European-built Columbus laboratory delivered by Atlantis to the International Space Station will host experiments from throughout Europe's scientific community and will be an important part of the orbiting research complex. NASA's own Destiny laboratory was already in orbit as part of the ISS. A Japanese laboratory complex will complete a cutting-edge trio of research bases that will host astronauts and experiments at the station.

"The station missions now are so busy," Frick said. "It's been a tremendous experience. We were very excited and pleased to bring Columbus to the International Space Station."

Meanwhile, Atlantis is back inside its hangar. The next mission for Atlantis will be in August, in a maintenance mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.

But NASA is already focusing on the next mission: STS-123. Space shuttle Endeavour is already perched on its launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

"It feels really good to have mission back-to-back again," said Mike Leinbach, launch director at Kennedy. "The team is really pumped to get going and get ready for their next flight."

The mission STS-123 astronauts will be at Kennedy February 23-25 for the terminal countdown demonstration test, which is a full launch dress rehearsal to prepare for a targeted March 11 liftoff.

Endeavour's crew includes Commander Dominic Gorie, Pilot Gregory Johnson and Mission Specialists Rick Linnehan, Robert Behnken, Mike Foreman and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's, Takao Doi.

Endeavour is launching with the expectation of staying in space for 16 days, and there are always extra days set aside in case weather or a technical problem delays landing.

NASA has scheduled five spacewalks for the mission STS-123. During the first two spacewalks, the astronauts will install the first pressurized section, Japanese Experiment Logistics Module (ELM-PS), of the future Kibo (Hope) Japanese module and he Canadian Space Agency’s newest contribution to the station, the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator.

The next two spacewalks of the mission will come on flight days 11 and 13. The fourth spacewalk will be used to replace a remote power control module and test a shuttle tile repair material. The repair material test was originally scheduled for Discovery’s mission last October, but was rescheduled so that problems with the station’s solar arrays could be addressed.

The goal is to complete this test before space shuttle Atlantis flies to the Hubble Space Telescope in August. Unlike missions to the space station, Atlantis’ crew members wouldn’t be able to wait on the station for another shuttle to bring them home if Atlantis was damaged.

And on the fifth spacewalk, mission specialists Robert L. Behnken and Mike Foreman will store on the station the boom that attaches to the shuttle’s robotic arm for heat shield inspections. The boom is being stored on orbit since the next shuttle will not have enough room to carry both the boom and the larger JAXA module in the cargo bay.