Shuttle Crew Returns Home for the Holidays

On the shortest day of the year, Discovery touches down on Runway 15 at NASA Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility as the sun sets, concluding mission STS-116 on Dec. 22, 2006. CREDIT: NASA.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Seven astronauts and NASA’s shuttle Discovery are home for the holidays after a successful mission to rewire the International Space Station (ISS). 

Despite a grim forecast of low clouds and rain, Discovery swooped down out of the Florida sky and loosed two sonic booms before making a twilight touchdown at NASA’s Shuttle Landing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

The sunset landing came at about 5:32 p.m. EST (2232 GMT), ending a complex 13-day spaceflight for Discovery’s STS-116 crew after 5.3 million mile (8.5 million kilometer) trip around their home planet.

"I think it's going to be a great holiday," said veteran spaceflyer Mark Polansky, Discovery’s commander, as he thanked mission control after landing. "We're just really proud of the entire NASA team and thank you."

Returning to Earth alongside Polansky were Discovery pilot William Oefelein, mission specialists Nicholas Patrick, Robert Curbeam, Joan Higginbotham and European Space Agency (ESA) astronauts Christer Fuglesang and Thomas Reiter. The astronauts had to wait one extra orbit to land at KSC due to the weather, NASA said.

“It’s been a fun mission,” Patrick, one of five first-time spaceflyers who launched aboard Discovery, told reporters Thursday. “And I think a successful one.”

The astronauts worked in concert with the space station’s Expedition 14 crew during their 13-day mission to overhaul the orbital laboratory’s power grid, add a new piece to its portside truss and stage an extra spacewalk to help fold a stubborn solar array. Their success leaves the ISS poised for the arrival of new solar wings, a module and international laboratories slated to launch in upcoming shuttle flights.

Reiter, a former ISS resident and Europe’s first long-duration member of station mission, replaced STS-116 mission specialist Sunita Williams, who took his place on the orbital laboratory’s Expedition 14 crew.

“We wish all the best to the people on Earth that we have a healthy New Year,” Reiter said before landing.

Mission controllers awoke the Discovery’s astronaut crew early Friday with Christmas music to celebrate their holiday return after 204 orbits around Earth.

Mission success

Discovery’s astronaut crew completed what mission managers largely believed to be among the most complex shuttle flights ever attempted. Their STS-116 mission marked the third shuttle flight of 2006 and the second dedicated to ISS assembly since construction stalled after the 2003 Columbia accident.

“We’d been training for this flight for over six years, so I can’t even begin to explain to you what it feels like to finally accomplish what we set out to do,” John Curry, NASA’s lead ISS flight director for STS-116, said after Discovery’s crew met all their station construction goals this week. “Cathartic is a good word, I guess, because I’ve been scared of this flight for a very long time.”

The mission’s ISS power reconfiguration alone prompted concerns over whether the station’s long-dormant primary electrical system and cooling pump hardware would perform as planned. Discovery’s flight marked the first time astronauts retracted a U.S. solar array -- and not without issues -- which called for an additional spacewalk. 

“I’m very, very proud and relieved and thankful that things worked out the way they did,” Curry said.

Bringing Discovery’s crew home proved an exercise of sorts for mission managers, who traded a spare weather day for a Monday spacewalk outside the ISS. Two alternate landing sites, Edwards Air Force Base in California and Northrup Strip at New Mexico’s White Sands Space Harbor, were also available since the shuttle carried only enough supplies to stay aloft until Saturday.

Busy year awaits

As 2006 nears its end, shuttle and ISS officials are already looking ahead to what promises to be an even more challenging series of joint construction missions.

“You’re going to see significant changes to the pressurized volume and also to the truss next year, Kirk Shireman, NASA’s deputy ISS program manager, said of next year’s shuttle and space station missions. “So it’s a really exciting year.”

Atlantis’ STS-117 mission – commanded by NASA shuttle veteran Rick Sturckow – is slated to launch spaceward aboard Atlantis no earlier than March 16, 2007 to deliver a new pair of solar arrays for installation on the space station’s starboard side.

Sturckow and his crew will kick off the first of what NASA expects to be a busy year of ISS construction, with five station-bound shuttles and ambitious flights that also include the delivery of a new connector node, the European ESA’s Columbus module and a logistics component of Japan’s Kibo laboratory.

The European Automated Transfer Vehicle is also due to make its first cargo flight to the ISS in May, and Russian Soyuz crew change missions and Progress resupply flights also abound.

“So, big changes coming to the ISS,” Shireman said. “I look forward to a very exciting year next year.”

But for Reiter, who is now a veteran of two long-duration spaceflights, the road ahead has more near-term goals and include reacquainting himself with life in gravity’s embrace.

“I trained a lot, and very hard, on the space station to minimize that time so I can feel normal and walk and hopefully start jogging again,” Reiter told students in Alaska Thursday. “My previous flight, it was about a week to feel a little bit normal, and I hope it will be a little less now.”

The STS-116 crew’s safe return concluded NASA’s 117th shuttle flight and the orbiter’s 33rd spaceflight. It also marked NASA’s 20th orbiter mission to the ISS, and the agency’s 15th December shuttle touchdown.

“I think this is a really great way to see the end of the year,” Polansky said earlier this week.

• Images: The Spacewalks of NASA’s STS-116
• Images: Discovery’s STS-116 Launch Day Gallery
• Mission Discovery: The ISS Rewiring Job of NASA’s STS-116
• Complete Space Shuttle Mission Coverage
• The Great Space Quiz: Space Shuttle Countdown
• All About the Space Shuttle