It looks like C-3PO and R2-D2's escape pod, but this capsule is actually a laboratory. Built by the European Space Agency for the International Space Station the svelte, 14-ton Columbus – shown here being prepped for transit to Kennedy Space Center – holds 10 phone booth-sized chambers full of instruments for, among other things, gauging the effects of weightlessness on microorganisms and on melting metals. If all goes as planned, late next year the new facility will ride a space shuttle into orbit, dock with the ISS, and become one of the biggest all-purpose science laboratories in space. Hopefully, this sky lab will stay there.
Orbiting Science by the Numbers
• Altitude of the ISS: 230 to 286 miles
• Length of Columbus: 22.5 feet
• Length of the ISS: 243 feet
• Fan-estimated length of that big-ass starbase in Star Trek III: 12,500 feet
– Elizabeth Svoboda
The labratory being prepped for transit to Kennedy Space Center.
The New Sky Lab