STS-122

Seven people were aboard the Space Shuttle. They are; Stephen Frick, who was the Commander, the man in charge of the Space Shuttle, Alan G. Poindexter, who was the Pilot, the man who flied the Shuttle, Leland D. Melvin, Rex J. Walheim, Hans Schlegel and Stanley G. Love, who were there to fit the Columbus onto the space station. Léopold Eyharts was also on board. He lived on the Space Station for a month. Daniel M. Tani, who was on the space station came home aboard the Soyuz spacecraft.

The flight was originally scheduled to launch, on 6 December 2007. A problem with a part of the fuel tank used to work out how much fuel was left went wrong, which meant the start of the flight had to be delayed. After the same part went wrong in an attempt to start the flight on 9 December, the start of the flight was moved to January 2008, and later to February. The flight started on 7 February 2008. Some people at NASA were worried that bad weather might stop the launch, but the bad weather cleared up in time for a good launch.

At 13:00 UTC, a 2-minute-43-second de-orbit (opposite of making an orbit) burn was conducted. Then it entered in the atmosphere at 13:35 UTC. Atlantis touched down on Runway 15 of the Kennedy Space Center at 9:07:10 EST (14:07:10 UTC).^[1][4] The wheels of the orbiter stopped at 09:08:08 EST (14:08:08 UTC).^[1][4]

The people aboard STS-122 had several jobs to do. The main job was to add the new room, or module, Columbus, to the space station. To do this, a robot arm, called a Remote Manipulator System, or RMS, will be used to lift Columbus out of the Space Shuttle, and move it over to a gap in the side of the space station. Two of the crew will then go outside, and fit parts to the module. Columbus will be used for scientific research.