Astronauts Rex Walheim and Stanley Love completed the third STS-122 spacewalk at 3:32 p.m. EST today. The excursion lasted seven hours and 25 minutes.

In this final scheduled spacewalk of the mission, Walheim and Love installed two payloads on the exterior of the European Space Agency's Columbus laboratory. The first, SOLAR, is an observatory that will monitor the sun for two years. The second is the European Technology Exposure Facility, which will carry nine experiments requiring exposure to the space environment.

With Mission Specialist Leland Melvin driving the space station's robotic arm, Love carried each of the experiment packages from space shuttle Atlantis' payload bay to Columbus where the spacewalkers installed them.

Astronauts Rex Walheim and Hans Schlegel completed the second of STS-122's three scheduled spacewalks at 4:12 p.m. EST. The excursion lasted 6 hours and 45 minutes.

The spacewalkers completed the removal of an expended Nitrogen Tank Assembly (NTA) and the installation of a new one on the P1 truss. The tank is part of the orbital outpost's cooling system.

With the help of the station's robotic arm, the spacewalkers moved the new NTA from its position in space shuttle Atlantis' payload bay. They temporarily stowed it on a Crew and Equipment Translation Aid cart while they removed the expended tank. With the new NTA installed, the old tank was transferred to the orbiter's payload bay for return to Earth.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Space shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to roll out to Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., on Monday, Feb. 18, as preparations move forward for the STS-123 mission. Endeavour is targeted to lift off March 11 on a 16-day mission to the International Space Station.

The first motion of the shuttle out of Kennedy's Vehicle Assembly Building is scheduled for 7 a.m. EST. The fully assembled space shuttle, consisting of the orbiter, external tank and twin solid rocket boosters, will be mounted on a mobile launcher platform and delivered to the pad on top of a crawler transporter. The crawler will travel slower than 1 mph during the 3.4-mile journey. The process is expected to take approximately six hours.

[img]http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/160328main_sts122_columbus.jpg[/img] Image above: The Columbus laboratory is moved into position to be attached to the Harmony module. Photo credit: NASA TV Today, STS-122 and Expedition 16 crew members used the International Space Station's robotic arm to attach the European Space Agency's Columbus laboratory to the station's Harmony module. STS-122 Mission Specialists Leland Melvin and Daniel Tani, along with Expedition 16 Flight Engineer Leopold Eyharts, used the orbital outpost's robotic arm to complete the installation at 4:44 p.m. EST.

WASHINGTON - NASA has assigned crews for the STS-127 space shuttle mission and the Expedition 19 International Space Station mission. The STS-127 mission will deliver the final components of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo laboratory to the station. Expedition 19 will double the size of the resident crew on the complex, expanding it to six people.

Mark L. Polansky will command the shuttle Endeavour for STS-127, targeted to launch in 2009. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Douglas G. Hurley will serve as the pilot. Mission specialists are Navy Lt. Cmdr. Christopher J. Cassidy, Thomas H. Marshburn, David A. Wolf and Julie Payette, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut.

1. Upcoming School Contact Robespierre Elementary School in Rueil Malmaison, France has been scheduled for an Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact on Thursday, February 21 at 14:21 UTC. Two hundred fifty-six students in grades 1-5 are enrolled at the school. ESA astronaut Léopold Eyharts, FX0STD/KE5FNO, plans to participate in this contact. 2. Astronaut Training Status The Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) team coordinated two amateur radio school contact simulations between students at Bay Area Charter Elementary in the Houston area and astronauts Mike Fincke, KE5AIT and Koichi Wakata, KC5ZTA at JSC. The two sessions took place on Friday, February 8 via the JSC W5RRR repeater. These two contacts were retransmitted on the Internet Radio Linking Project (IRLP). They were also fed into the Echolink AMSAT (101 377) and JK1ZRW (277 208) servers and received 8 connections, including 2 link nodes and one repeater node from the U.S., Japan, and the Ukraine.