Atlantis is on track for Thursday's launch. After a delay of two months because of electrical faults with fuel gauges on the shuttle's external fuel tank, it appears that the shuttle will finally carry to the ISS Europe's Columbus space laboratory.

This will be the final scheduled visit by Atlantis to the International Space Station. The mission also marks the 8th visit to the International Space Station for Atlantis. The space shuttle is scheduled to lift off from the Kennedy Space Center at 2:45 pm (1945 GMT) Thursday, but there is a 60 percent change of rain, low clouds and lightning from thunderstorms.

Thus it will not be known up until Thursday whether the launch will be initiated. A cold front is moving through Texas today and will cause trouble through Thursday. "That will cause some dicey weather on Thursday," launch weather officer Mike McAleenan said to the press. "We hope we can find a hole."

About 25 years in the making, Europe's Columbus space laboratory will finally be launched on a flight to the International Space Station on Thursday. The event occurs just 15 years late of its original launch date. The 17-nation European Space Agency developed the Columbus starting in 1982, aiming to launch it in 1992, to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the great navigator's voyage to the New World.

The $2 billion lab will allow experiments to be conducted on the behavior of weightless liquids, and on micro-organisms, cells and tissues.

Columbus is designed for ten years of operation and will be controlled by the special Columbus Control Centre, located at the German Space Operations Centre, part of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). On May 27 last year, the Columbus lab was flown from Bremen to Kennedy Space Center on board an Airbus Beluga.

NASA has scheduled three spacewalks for the STS-122 mission. On flight day 4, Walheim and Schlegel’s main task will be to prepare the Columbus module for installation on Harmony. They will install the Power Data Grapple Fixture on Columbus, which will allow the space station’s robotic arm to grab the module and move it from the shuttle’s payload bay to Harmony. The astronauts also will begin work to remove the Nitrogen Tank Assembly, a part of the station’s thermal control system, from the P1 truss. The assembly needs to be replaced because the nitrogen is running low.

On flight day 6, Walheim and Schlegel will remove the old NTA and temporarily store it on an equipment cart. They will then install the new one. The old NTA will be transferred to the shuttle’s payload bay for return home.

On flight day 8, Walheim and Love will install two payloads on Columbus’ exterior: SOLAR, an observatory to monitor the sun; and the European Technology Exposure Facility (EuTEF) that will carry eight different experiments requiring exposure to the space environment. The astronauts also will move a failed control moment gyroscope from its storage location on the station to the shuttle’s payload bay for return to Earth.