Astronauts prepare for Wednesday's shuttle return

By Ed Stoddard

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Astronauts worked to outfit Europe's new permanent space laboratory on Saturday as a busy visit by NASA's shuttle Atlantis to the International Space Station neared its end.

NASA is readying landing sites at both the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Edwards Air Force Base in California to ensure a landing on Wednesday, as the U.S. military wants the shuttle landed by then so it can try to shoot down a disabled spy satellite with a missile.

In a news conference on Saturday with reporters on the ground in Europe and the United States, Atlantis commander Steve Frick said he had no worries about the U.S. military's high-tech shooting event.

"We don't have any concerns ... we're going to be safely on the ground before they take any action," Frisk said.

The Pentagon on Thursday said the Navy would try to shoot down the disabled satellite before it enters the atmosphere, using a modified tactical missile from a ship in the Pacific, to avert a potentially deadly leak of toxic gas from its fuel tank.

The Columbus module, the European Space Agency's $1.9 billion space lab, was launched aboard Atlantis last week and connected to the space station on Monday.

The external work on the lab during this mission was capped on Friday when spacewalking astronauts installed a solar observatory and an experimental facility on it.

Atlantis is scheduled to undock from the space station at 4:26 a.m. EST on Monday and is due to touch down on Wednesday at 9:06 a.m.