CAPE
CANAVERAL, Fla. - The sky may be cloudy over NASA's Florida spaceport, but six astronauts are
all smiles after riding their space shuttle back to Earth Monday.
"It's good
to be back," said Discovery's STS-121 mission commander Steven
Lindsey. "We had a long, but successful mission."
NASA's STS-121
astronauts landed
aboard Discovery at 9:14 a.m. EDT (1314 GMT) today after a 13-day
spaceflight to the International Space Station (ISS). It was Lindsey who
deftly piloted the spacecraft - then a 100-ton glider - to a graceful stop
despite a thick cloud layer and some last minute runway changes.
"We didn't
see anything until about 10,000 feet," said Lindsey, a four-time shuttle flyer.
"I'd never gone through weather like that on real shuttle landing but it's not
a big deal."
Discovery's
STS-12 spaceflight carried the astronauts around their home planet 202 times,
about enough to span about 5.3 million miles (8.5 million kilometers), NASA
said. By the numbers, the mission ran 12 days, 18 hours, 37 minutes and 54
seconds, and cost an estimated $1 billion, the space agency said.
In addition
to Lindsey, STS-121 pilot Mark Kelly
and mission specialists Lisa
Nowak, Stephanie
Wilson, Piers
Sellers and Michael Fossum
rode Discovery back to Earth Monday. Of the six astronauts -a seventh
crewmember, European Space Agency (ESA) spaceflyer Thomas
Reiter, joined the ISS Expedition 13 crew during the flights - Nowak,
Wilson and Fossum made their spaceflight debuts with the mission.
"It does
feel very good to not be a rookie anymore, to be able to have a spaceflight
under my belt," Wilson said.
"When we
first got up there, Mike and I kind of gave each other a high-five," Nowak
said. "It was just so cool, we were in space."
Nowak kept
her hair neatly tied in a ponytail to avoid the stereotypical weightless
hairdo, but the method had its drawbacks.
"One of the
funniest things I saw on orbit...we're down in the middeck and there's Velcro all
over the place, and she got her hair stuck in the Velcro," Lindsey said of
Nowak. "Of course it was very uncomfortable for her, but I just couldn't help
myself and started cracking up."
Kelly, whose
identical twin brother Scott Kelly is also a NASA astronaut and set to command
STS-118 in August 2007, said he is looking forward to spending time with his
family.
"We're
going to go into town tonight and go home tomorrow," Kelly said, adding that he
looks forward to seeing his children but had lost track of the days. "I'm
looking forward to the weekend...what day is it?"
Fossum
settled one remaining mystery from Discovery's flight surrounding some "surface
deposits" - AKA bird
droppings - which the STS-121 crew discovered during an in-depth inspection
of their spacecraft's wing edges and nose cap.
"They made
it home," Fossum said. "They were a bit charred."
Fossum and
Sellers performed three spacewalks during their busy spaceflight, yet confessed
that the mission's most gratifying moment was not the orbital work, but its
completion.
"Most
satisfying, I think, is you know when we all looked at each other, we all
stopped frankly, and said, 'You know, we're done,'" Sellers said. "For me, you
know, my most satisfying moment to see everyone else looking around at each
other with smiles and say, 'We're done, we did it.'"
The
astronauts did have a serious mission to perform, and according to mission managers
they came through with flying colors. The astronauts not only ferried Reiter to
the ISS, they also delivered thousands of pounds of cargo to the station crew,
made fixes critical to orbital laboratory's future construction and tested a
series of heat shield repair tools and techniques.
"This crew
sitting before you, they were just about as perfect as you can be on a flight,"
Lindsey said. "I couldn't have asked for anything more."
NASA's
STS-121 mission marked the agency's second of two orbiter test flights since
the 2003 Columbia accident
that destroyed one orbiter and killed seven astronauts.
"I don't
think we want to ever put Columbia
behind us," Lindsey said, adding that the tragic loss led to vital improvements
in safety and NASA culture. "We've learned the cultural organizational lessons
of Columbia and that's the one thing we don't
ever want to forget."
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