#HumanSpaceflight image of the week features a ready-to-ship lab.

Originally shared by European Space Agency, ESA

#HumanSpaceflight image of the week features a ready-to-ship lab.

The European #Columbus module is packed up and loaded for transport to the US in this image from 2006. Built in Turin, Italy, and Bremen, Germany, the completed module was shipped to NASA’s facilities in Cape Canaveral, Florida ahead of its February 2008 launch aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis.

Columbus has been providing #microgravity #research facilities for the past decade. In honour of this milestone, this week’s image celebrates Columbus’ triumph over setbacks. Many events factored into its delayed launch: the bureaucratic challenge of planning and budgeting, construction delays and the tragic 2003 #Columbia Shuttle disaster meant Columbus was five years behind schedule by the time it climbed into the sky.

So it was with joy and relief when Columbus inside its climate-controlled container was loaded into the Beluga aircraft, an Airbus A300 named after the whale it resembles.

Read more: http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2018/01/Setting_sail

Credit: EADS–I. Wagner