BERLIN, May 17 (RIA Novosti) - A new European mission control center is ready to coordinate the flight to the international orbital station next year of the Columbus spacelab module, the head of Russia's top spacecraft manufacturer said Wednesday.
"The mission control in Oberpfaffenhofen near Munich is very well equipped and is completely ready to control the European Columbus research module's joining the International Space Station," said Nikolai Sevastyanov, head of Energia Rocket and Space Corporation.
The Columbus will be launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida next year.
Sevastyanov said experiments in medicine, biology, and biophysics would be conducted at the ISS when the Columbus laboratory docked.
The European Space Agency's space center, built with the German Aerospace Center as prime contractor and commissioned in 2004, will join Russia's mission control near Moscow and the U.S.' space center in Houston in coordinating research at the orbital station.
The center near the southern German city of Munich will monitor systems to be used by European astronauts and coordinate their activities on the station, but Russia and the U.S. will remain in control of the ISS mission, Sevastyanov said.
