Washington, Sep 22 (DPA) Extra sleep and loud applause for the Atlantis shuttle crew, huge relief for NASA's shuttle programme - and joyful anticipation among European and Japanese space officials: that's the mood after the completion of the first major construction mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in nearly four years.

The faultless landing Thursday morning of Atlantis at Cape Canaveral in Florida signalled the final push to complete the building of the station, circling 360 km above the Earth.

After the deadly disintegration of NASA's Columbia shuttle in February 2003, construction on the station came to a near standstill.

Shuttles were grounded until new safety precautions and designs were developed, leaving the workload to the smaller Russian Soyuz craft that were unable to carry heavy cargo.

But after two test shuttle missions to the ISS over the past year, the Atlantis finally carried and installed the heavy wing-like truss segment with solar panels that will double the station's power-generation capacity.

Now, all eyes are directed again to outer space. After years of waiting, NASA's partners - the European Space Agency, Japan, Canada and Russia - can finally focus on new plans.

German astronaut Thomas Reiter arrived in July at the ISS as the first European in a long-term residency, and Sweden plans to send its own Christer Fuglesang by year's end. Sweden's astronaut is to conduct at least two space walks.

In 2006, plans call for Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli to help install the European connecting module, Node 2.

After that, ESA's long-awaited Columbus laboratory - Europe's biggest single contribution to the space station - is to be loaded onto the shuttle Discovery in October 2007, and mounted with the help of German astronaut Hans Schlegel.

The 4.5-metre long Columbus, which was to have been mounted long before now, will allow Earth-based researchers to conduct experiments in life sciences, materials science, fluid physics and other fields.

Then comes Japan's Kibo - the largest single ISS module at 11.2 metres long - that will allow external space experiments. A gradient heating furnace on Kibo, for example, will allow high quality crystal growth at temperatures of 500-1600 degrees Centigrade.

Kibo will also include sensitive X-ray slit cameras to monitor X-ray sources in space.

Nerves were frayed at NASA by the time Atlantis finally took off Sep 9 - three and a half years later than planned, and after four cancellations due to weather and technical glitches.

During the Atlantis visit to the station, NASA managed three space walks in only four days, pushing the astronauts to their limit. After the new solar sails were in place, controllers in Houston rewarded the crew. On Saturday, they were allowed to sleep an extra hour.

"We've been very, very busy so the chance to sleep in was very much appreciated," rookie astronaut Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper quipped.

If all goes well, space shuttles will make another 14 trips to the space station by 2010, when construction is to be finished. After that, NASA will redirect focus to the moon and neighbouring planets, and to developing a new design for the "Orion" craft.

The new craft will fall back on old space technology of the Apollo era, with the spacecraft mounted on top of the rocket, and returning to earth for soft landings.