All seven astronauts are at Cape Canaveral in Florida reviewing procedures and awaiting their construction mission to the International Space Station.
Commander Stephen Frick said to a press gathering, "We're really excited to be here in Florida today, obviously on a tremendous day, and we hope that it stays like this all week long, to have our chance to launch in Atlantis on Thursday and bring the Columbus module up to the International Space Station. Obviously it has been a real long training flow for us, a long time building to this moment, and so we are just absolutely ready to go."
The primary goal of this mission is to install a European-built space laboratory called Columbus. The module is seven meters long and more than four and half meters in diameter. A Japanese laboratory is scheduled for delivery to the space station next year.
NASA's shuttle Atlantis and a massive European laboratory are on track for their planned Thursday launch toward the International Space Station (ISS).
Atlantis' seven-astronaut crew is slated to liftoff from a seaside launch pad here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) spaceport at 4:31 p.m. EST (2131 GMT), with a 90 percent chance of pristine weather conditions.
"The vehicle is looking good and the weather is looking good, too," said shuttle weather officer Kathy Winters, of the U.S. Air Force's 45th Weather Squadron, in a morning briefing.
Commanded by veteran shuttle astronaut Stephen Frick, Atlantis' STS-122 crew will haul the European Space Agency's (ESA) 13-ton Columbus lab to the ISS during a planned 11-day mission. Three spacewalks are on tap for the spaceflight, but NASA may extend the mission by two days to add fourth excursion to inspect a balky ISS solar array joint.
NASA test director Jeff Spaulding said shuttle workers detected a small leak in ground equipment late Wednesday after loading super-chilled liquid hydrogen into Atlantis' tanks, but the glitch is not expected to hinder plans for tomorrow's launch.
"It's on the ground side only," Spaulding told reporters. "It is not a vehicle issue at all."
NASA space shuttles use liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen reactants to power their three fuel cells during orbital flight.
Spaulding said engineers will spend the bulk of today testing Atlantis' communication systems and loading the final pieces of cargo into the shuttle's middeck. A pair of experiments and some last-minute food items are on that list, he said.
Frick and his STS-122 crew, meanwhile, plan to visit Atlantis at the pad today as part of the prelaunch preparations, NASA officials said.
At 8:00 p.m. EST (0100 Dec. 6 GMT) tonight, pad workers are expected to retract the shroud-like Rotating Service Structure that protects Atlantis from weather at its Pad 39A launch site.
NASA has a slim window that closes on Dec. 13 in order to launch Atlantis to the ISS while the angles between the station's solar arrays and the sun are favorable for docked operations. If weather foils Thursday's launch attempt, NASA could try again as early as Friday at 4:09 p.m. EST (2109 GMT).
Winters said the weather outlook offers an 80 percent change of favorable launch conditions on Friday, but will dip to about 60 percent on Saturday.
Atlantis' STS-122 mission will mark NASA's fourth shuttle flight of the year and the second to deliver a new pressurized module to the ISS.
NASA will broadcast Atlantis' STS-122 mission live on NASA TV. Click here for SPACE.com's shuttle mission coverage and NASA TV feed.
Alan Poindexter
Atlantis pilot Alan Poindexter explains. "Columbus is the main contribution of the European Space Agency and it is the first pressurized module that is non-U.S. or non-Russian, and it adds a lot of laboratory space as well as interior volume to the space station."
The European Space Agency's Daniele Laurini takes us inside witha virtual trip. "I have a short animation. We are flying to the station. We are slowly entering into Columbus, and we zoom into the facilities that we have installed for launch. We have four major facilities dedicated to research in physiology, biology and material sciences, and in general experimentation. We slowly go back to node two and magically, through the laptop display, we go to the outside."
Atlantis astronauts plan three space walks to install the Columbus laboratory.
NASA managers say the weather looks good for Thursday's launch. If all goes as planned, Atlantis will return to the Kennedy Space Center on December 17th, wrapping up the fourth and final shuttle flight of the year.
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