Frick and his U.S., German, and French crew will reach the space station on Saturday and begin installing Columbus the very next day.
Three spacewalks are planned during the flight, which is scheduled to last 11 to 12 days. (Watch video of astronauts on spacewalks.)
Besides Columbus, Atlantis will drop off a new space station resident, French Air Force General Leopold Eyharts, who will swap places with NASA astronaut Daniel Tani to get Columbus installed and operational.
Tani will return to Earth aboard the shuttle, ending a nearly four-month mission.
Retirement Looming
To NASA's relief, all four fuel gauges in Atlantis' external fuel tank worked properly during the final stage of the countdown.
The gauges failed back in December because of a faulty connector, so NASA redesigned the part to fix the problem.
NASA officials were anxious to get Atlantis flying as soon as possible to keep alive hopes of achieving six launches this year.
The space agency faces a 2010 deadline for finishing the station and retiring the shuttles.
That equates to four or five shuttle flights a year between now and then, which NASA Administrator Michael Griffin considers achievable.
"We're coming back, and I think we are back, from some pretty severe technical problems that led to the loss of Columbia," Griffin said, referring to the tragic destruction of that space shuttle in 2003.
Barring any more major mechanical trouble or freak hailstorms, like the one that battered Atlantis's fuel tank a year ago, "this should be like some of those earlier times when we had some fairly uninterrupted stretches with no technical problems where we could just fly," Griffin said.
"That's what I'm looking forward to."
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