FACTBOX: Lab a centerpiece of Europe's space program

(Reuters) - The Columbus laboratory aboard the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis is the European Space Agency's primary contribution to the $100 billion International Space Station program. Atlantis lifted off on Thursday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Here's a look at the lab:

* Columbus cost 1.3 billion euros ($1.9 billion). The cylindrical lab is 23 feet long and nearly 15 feet

in diameter.

* The lab was launched with five experiment racks including a biology laboratory for cell and tissue studies, a fluid science lab and a facility to study effects of weightlessness on the human body.

*It has room for 16 racks and three crewmembers to work on experiments.

* Columbus has hookups for four external experiments. The first two to fly are the Solar Monitoring Observatory and the European Technology Exposure Facility for materials science studies.

* The experiments can be operated remotely by scientists at nine centers in Europe and coordinated by the Columbus Control Centre in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by Jim Loney and Xavier Briand)