When we finally thought things just couldn’t be better for the Atlantis mission and after yesterday’s successful docking with the ISS, NASA has had to deal with one more bump in the road: they had to delay installing the Columbus Module to the International Space Station after one of the astronauts, German Hans Schlegel, has had to deal with health problems.

The spacewalk that was scheduled to take place on Sunday was postponed until Monday, when another astronaut, Stan Love, will replace him.  No specific details were given about the astronaut’s health problems. According to the NASA official web site, the delay will have no impact on the overall mission, and that the Atlantis is expected to return to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on February 19 at 10:14 p.m.

Prior to announcing the spacewalk delay, Mission Chief John Shannon said two glitches were detected on the Atlantis, both minor, and that even  though  one of the navigational computers had failed, the mission was still on track and was facing no serious threats. At the same time, he announced that the official rotation between astronauts Leopold Eyharts and Expedition 16 Flight Engineer Dan Tani took place as scheduled.

The spacewalk due to take place tomorrow will include STS-122 Mission Specialists Rex Walheim and astronaut Stanley Love, who will supervise the manoeuvre of removing the Columbus Module with the help of a robotic arm that will dock it to the starboard hatch of the Harmony module. The Columbus laboratory will be ready to conduct experiment within the next few hours after it has been docked.

The Columbus laboratory is European Space Agency’s most prized achievement, is 7 m long and weights 12.8 tons, and will allow scientists on the International Space Station to conduct experiments in weightless environments, which would be impossible to re-create on Earth, from various fields, such as fluid Physics, material sciences, technology, biology and life sciences.