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.
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