Discovery's STS-114 Astronauts Ready to Return to Earth

Discovery's STS-114 commander Eileen Collins is flanked by her fellow astronauts Stephen Robinson (left), mission specialist, and James Kelly, pilot in this image taken aboard the shuttle during the 13-day spaceflight. CREDIT: NASA.

HOUSTON - With one day left in their orbital trip, the seven astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery are ready to come home.

Discovery's STS-114 crew, commanded by veteran astronaut Eileen Collins, told reporters Sunday that despite the allure of spaceflight, they're ready to return to their friends and families on the ground. The astronauts are set to land in the pre-dawn hours of Monday at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.

"I'm having a great time up here...we're really having space experiences of a lifetime," Collins told CNN from Discovery's flight deck during a series of video interviews. "But it's time to come home and keep working on getting the shuttle better and ready to fly again, and we're ready to see our families again."

Collins and her STS-114 crew are nearing the end of a 13-day space trip to test new safety measures and resupply the International Space Station (ISS). They are NASA's first shuttle astronauts to fly since the loss of the Columbia orbiter and its seven-astronaut crew on Feb. 1, 2003. That shuttle sustained damage from a piece of external tank foam at launch and broke apart during reentry.

"I have had a lot of thoughts about Columbia and I will have a lot of thoughts after the landing, but we're all going to be focused tomorrow on the task at hand," Collins told CBS.

Collins and shuttle pilot James Kelly will have their hands full flying Discovery, now a 100-ton glider, through the Earth's atmosphere and landing at KSC's Shuttle Landing Facility. Discovery's crew will spend the rest of the day setting up their reentry seats and the orange pressure suits the astronauts will wear during their descent.

"It kind of feels at points like it's a runaway train," Kelly told CNN of the shuttle's reentry. "As you get closer and closer to landing, you're doing more and more operations and really need keep track of things relatively fast to get down to the ground...it's a very exciting and exhilarating process that ends with being at home."

Reentering the Earth's atmosphere and once more feeling the effects of gravity again is a "weird sensation," STS-114 mission specialist Andrew Thomas told ABC, adding that tomorrow's descent will be his first with a window seat. The astronaut has returned to in a shuttle middeck on three previous flights.

"You feel every organ in your body," Thomas said of reentry, adding only gradually does the effect of gravity set in. "Straps and things slowly settle down to the floor and you get pulled down into your chair for the first time in two weeks."

Discovery's crew said they were proud to have accomplished all of the major goals of their mission, which included ISS resupply and testing of several new inspection and safety tools and repair methods instituted as a direct result of the Columbia accident.

"I think as a test flight it was very successful," STS-114 mission specialist Charles Camarda told CBS. "We evaluated several different sensor systems, we've even done a repair. I think we've far exceeded what we expected for this flight."

Camarda, Thomas and Kelly used a new orbital boom tipped with laser and camera sensors to verify the integrity of their shuttle's heat shield.

STS-114 mission specialists Stephen Robinson and Soichi Noguchi conducted three spacewalks to build up and repair parts of the ISS. In their final spacewalk, Robinson rode the station's robotic arm underneath the belly of Discovery to pluck two strips of filler material jutting out from between the orbiter's heat-resistant tiles - a first-time fix for NASA.

"That was the easiest thing I did of all the [spacewalks]," Robinson told CNN, adding that it was only the hard work of everyone on the ground and his fellow Discovery crewmates that made the job easy. "We now know that we can approach the underside of the orbiter with an EVA crewmember. I did the simplest possible thing and that makes it possible to consider maybe other tests and repairs later in the future if we ever need to."

More work does need to be done to prevent the type of external tank foam shedding - the same problem that doomed Columbia - seen during Discovery's July 26 launch. NASA was surprised to see the foam loss, especially after spending $1.4 billion and two and a half years to address the problem. Shuttle officials have said they will not launch another orbiter until the foam issue is solved.

"I would say it does disappoint us, but we have collected a lot of information on this flight," STS-114 mission specialist Wendy Lawrence told Fox News. "I don't think the delay for the STS-121 flight will be nearly as long."

Noguchi had a brief message for his family.

"See you tomorrow, and it's been a great trip," he said. "We'll come back with lots of good stories."

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