14 DAY TRIAL // Well, it's sixteen years plus a few days later, but it has made it. Columbus goes into a new voyage, through space this time. Astronauts on board the International Space Station have been successful in docking the European Space Laboratory to the ISS, after a spacewalk eight hours long, one and a half hour more than originally predicted by NASA engineers, mostly due to the unexpected replacement of German ESA astronaut Hans Schlegel with Stanley Love.
Schlegel fell ill soon after the launch of the STS-122 mission, but his condition is not serious enough to put his life in danger, nor that of the crew on board the ISS, as NASA said in a press statement. The U.S. space agency and the ESA, however, failed to communicate the nature of the illness experienced by Schlegel. He was restricted from performing the scheduled spacewalk and reassigned to directing docking operations from inside the ISS throughout the recovering stage.
Schlegel was supposed to work along with the American astronaut Rex Walheim during the spacewalk, but his last-minute replacement seems to have slightly affected the work schedule, as both Walheim and Love struggled to dock the space module to the ISS. Not only that, but an additional set of tasks have been delayed for the next two spacewalks due to the fact that Love did not actually go through the training followed by Schlegel and experienced difficulties adapting to the tasks.
Columbus was commissioned by the ESA in 1985, and was supposed to go into space in 1992, in order to commemorate 500 years since Christopher Columbus went on his voyage to discover the New World. However, space station delays and additional space shuttle problems pushed the launch schedule until this year. Columbus was docked at one of the ports of the Harmony module, which is also supposed to take the task of docking JAXA's space laboratory that will be launched into space somewhere next month, with the help of the Endeavor space shuttle.
Schlegel will most likely take his place aside Walheim in the spacewalk scheduled for tomorrow, as there is still much work to be done at Columbus, before it becomes habitable. The third spacewalk is due to take place on Friday.