The NASA officials announced today that the space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled for take off on February 7 at 2:45 p.m. EST.  

Atlantis, which will carry the European space laboratory Columbus to the International Space Station, had been set for takeoff December 6 but was eventually delayed until indefinitely after several scrapped launches blamed on the failing fuel sensors.

Known as Engine Cut-Off (ECO) sensors, the instruments sit on the bottom of Atlantis' 15-story external tank and serve as liquid hydrogen fuel gauges that ensure a shuttle's three main engines shut down before their hydrogen supply runs dry after liftoff.

Atlantis will carry the European-developed Columbus laboratory and attach it to the International Space Station.

Columbus is about 23 feet long and 15 feet wide, allowing it to hold 10 "racks" of experiments, each approximately the size of a phone booth. Five NASA racks will be added to the laboratory once it is in orbit. Each rack provides independent controls for power and cooling, as well as communication links to earthbound controllers and researchers. These links will allow scientists all over Europe to participate in their own experiments in space from several user centers and, in some cases, even from their own work locations.

NASA managers formally set the launch date, pending analysis of a flexible hose in the shuttle's radiator cooling system.

The bent hose was discovered Tuesday on Atlantis during inspections of the payload bay doors. Engineers want to determine whether the braided metal hose, which carries Freon to cool the shuttle's systems while in space, will work as planned. The hose in question runs from the shuttle body to the radiator panels on the cargo bay doors.

"We're heading for the seventh of February for launch and we'll continue to look at the radiator hose issue," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for Space Operations. Officials will meet again Saturday to evaluate testing and other data related to the hose.