NASA said Friday it has given its thumbs-up for the December 6 launch of the shuttle Atlantis on its 11-day mission to deliver a European laboratory to the orbiting International Space Station (ISS).
"We are all on track for the launch next Thursday," Bill Gerstenmeyer, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's chief of space operations, told reporters.
"At the end of the day, everyone was comfortable to go to fly," said space shuttle manager Wayne Hale.
The Atlantis is due to blast off from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida on December 6, at 4:31 pm (2131 GMT). There is a 10-minute launch window on Thursday, but the mission can be rescheduled if needed, during an eight-day period ending on December 13.
The seven-member Atlantis mission will deliver the European-made Columbus laboratory to the ISS, which was provided with a special 14-tonne docking module for two laboratories during the last shuttle mission of the Discovery (October 23-November 7).
The Japanese Kibo laboratory is due to be delivered in early 2008.
The US space agency plans to launch at least another 10 missions to complete the ISS by 2010, when the shuttle fleet is scheduled to be taken out of service.
The seven crew members flying on the Atlantis will include two astronauts from the European Space Agency: Frenchman Leopold Eyharts and German Hans Schlegel.
The Atlantis mission will include at least three spacewalks, with a fourth reserved for a possible inspection of a faulty mechanism on one of the ISS's three solar arrays.
