Illustration of the module in its new position.
"Columbus is touching the station for the first time," said French astronaut Leo Eyharts about 4:30 p.m. EST.
Motorized bolts were driven home shortly afterward.
"The European Columbus module is officially a part of the ISS," he added, shortly after the 4:44 p.m. EST docking time.
Lifting it from Atlantis' payload bay at 2:56 p.m., Leland Melvin moved the space station arm to the module and hoisted it free. He was assisted by Eyharts of the European Space Agency, which built the module. Columbus will be opened on Tuesday.
Installing Columbus begins an era of U.S./Russian/European cooperation at the space station. It will be operated from a command center in Germany.
Spacewalkers Rex Walheim and Stan Love have wrapped up their spacewalk by entering the airlock. Installing a balky grapple fixture caused more than an hour delay in the scheduled 6.5-hour spacewalk, which ran nearly eight hours.
Click for STS-122 fact sheet.
Click here for the flight day 5 execute package.
Click here for the NASA-TV schedule, which details mission events.
Walheim, Love and Melvin
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