CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The successful return of seven astronauts aboard NASA’s shuttle Atlantis kicks off a challenging construction year for the International Space Station (ISS), NASA officials said Friday.

Atlantis returned Friday with veteran shuttle flyer Rick Sturckow at the helm to complete NASA’s STS-117 mission to deliver new trusses, solar arrays and one crewmember to the ISS.

“It was a beautiful landing out there, right on the money,” NASA launch director Mike Leinbach said after Atlantis’ 3:49 p.m. EDT (1949 GMT) arrival at a backup runway at California’s Edwards Air Force Base.

The shuttle’s 14-day spaceflight primed the orbital laboratory for the addition of a new connecting module and the European Space Agency’s Columbus laboratory later this year, as well as the first pieces of Japan’s three-segment Kibo module in early 2008.

To do that, NASA plans to launch the space shuttle Endeavour’s STS-118 mission on Aug. 9 to deliver a small spacer piece to the station’s starboard truss. Barbara Morgan, NASA’s first educator-astronaut, will also fly on that mission.

The shuttle Discovery follows on Oct. 20 to haul the Harmony connecting node to the ISS, with Atlantis again on tap to deliver Columbus in December. Each of those spaceflights, plus vital spacewalks and other assembly tasks by ISS crews in between them, must occur in order to continue the station’s construction.

“I think there’s even bigger challenges in front of us as we continue assembly through the rest of this year,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, after the STS-117 mission.

NASA plans at least 12 more shuttle flights through September 2010 to complete the space station’s construction. Two additional shuttle flights to ship cargo, spare parts and equipment to the ISS, may also fly. One additional flight to service the Hubble Space Telescope in September 2008 is also on tap.

Learning from glitches

Gerstenmaier said NASA and its international partners have taken key lessons from Atlantis’ STS-117 mission.

Engineers have already performed a series of pull tests on protective thermal blankets aboard Endeavour to ensure their secure after a similar one peeled back from its left aft engine pod mount during Atlantis’ June 8 launch.

STS-117 spacewalker Danny Olivas secured the torn blanket with medical staples and pins. While an initial inspection found a slight gap between the blanket and surrounding heat tiles after landing, the anchor pins were still in place, NASA said.

Gerstenmaier said that a major crash of vital Russian control and navigation systems during the STS-117 mission has also paid off with lessons of the limits of current and future station hardware.

Engineers and ISS cosmonauts traced the crash to the failure of redundant surge-protector like circuits within the computers, and then bypassed the fault using jumper cables. But it will likely take months to determine exactly what caused the circuits to fail in the first place.

During that time, ISS engineers will take a close look at similar computer systems aboard the Columbus laboratory and Europe’s unmanned station cargo ship, the Automated Transfer Vehicle, Gerstenmaier said.

Meanwhile, Atlantis’ seven-astronaut crew will return to Houston - home of NASA’s Johnson Space Center astronaut training facility - for some much-deserved rest.

“This flight crew did a phenomenal job on orbit,” Gerstenmaier said of the STS-117 astronaut. “They seem in great spirits”

• SPACE.com Video Interplayer: Space Station Power Up with STS-117
• IMAGES: Atlantis Shuttle’s STS-117 Launch Day
• Complete Shuttle Mission Coverage