Endeavour, astronauts back on Earth
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - March 27, 2008 Endeavour's touchdown Wednesday night on NASA's illuminated
runway wrapped up a voyage that lasted 16 days and spanned 6.5
million miles. Mission Control immediately offered up its
congratulations.
"It was a super-rewarding mission," said shuttle commander
Dominic Gorie, "exciting from the start to the ending."
NASA's space operations chief, Bill Gerstenmaier, watched with
pleasure from the landing strip as Europe's new space station
supply ship and then the international space station soared
overhead, resembling a pair of twinkling stars. Moments later,
Endeavour landed, an hour after sunset.
"I can't think of a better day, or the better ending of a day,
than to see those three wonderful pieces of hardware,"
Gersteinmaier said.
Endeavour's homecoming was a bit delayed.
The space shuttle was supposed to land before sunset, but at
virtually the last minute, clouds moved in. As the astronauts took
an extra swing around the planet, the sky cleared enough to satisfy
flight controllers and - after asking Gorie for his opinion - they
gave him the green light to head home.
It was only the 22nd space shuttle landing in darkness. Less
than one-fifth of all missions have ended at nighttime; the last
one was in 2006.
Endeavour blasted off March 11 - also in darkness - on an
ambitious, intense space station construction mission that had even
its commander wondering at times how everything would go.
In the end, Gorie and his multinational crew accomplished
everything they set out to do. The astronauts installed the first
piece of Japan's Kibo lab, put together a giant Canadian robot
named Dextre, tested a shuttle repair technique and more.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said he told Gorie following
touchdown that "he had really flown two missions in one for us."
"I can't imagine that the mission could have gone any better,
and they made it look easy."
Returning aboard Endeavour was French Air Force Gen. Leopold
Eyharts, who spent 1½ months aboard the space station, and Japanese
astronaut Takao Doi, who accompanied his country's space station
contribution to orbit.
The Japanese Space Agency's vice president, Kaoru Mamiya, said
he felt lucky to witness the safe landing of the shuttle. "It's
the first step for our Kibo construction," he said.
The space station is now 70 percent complete, thanks to the
latest additions, with a mass of nearly 600,000 pounds.
Ten more shuttle flights to the space station are scheduled over
the next two years. NASA hopes to have its share of the orbiting
outpost finished in 2010 and its three shuttles retired, so it can
focus on human expeditions to the moon.
Discovery is scheduled to fly to the space station in late May,
carrying up Japan's enormous Kibo lab. The fuel tank for that
mission arrived at Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday, later than
planned, and Griffin said that almost certainly will mean a launch
delay of at least a few days.
Subsequent fuel tanks also could get backed up because of all
the design changes necessitated by the 2003 Columbia disaster.
NASA expects to have a better idea in another month of whether
it can keep the year's launches on track.
On the space station, meanwhile, the three occupants are gearing
up for next week's arrival of the European Space Agency's supply
ship, Jules Verne. The unmanned cargo carrier - the first of its
kind - rocketed away from French Guiana this month with a load of
food, water and clothes.
On April 8, the Russians will launch a fresh space station crew
from Kazakhstan.
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